Objective: To assess whether comorbid attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) influences response to treatment in young patients with acute mania.
Methods:We conducted a metaanalysis of 5 open trials of 100, 35, 41, 60, and 37 children and adolescents. The pooled group included 273 children and adolescents with bipolar disorder (BD), divided into 2 subgroups: those with (n = 132), and those without (n = 141), ADHD comorbidity.Results: There was a moderate and significant reduction in relative risk (RR) favouring treatment response in children and adolescents with BD but without ADHD comorbidity (RR 0.822; 95%CI, 0.69 to 0.97; P = 0.021). The negative effect of ADHD comorbidity on treatment response was more significant in studies including adolescents only or subjects with BD I only.
Conclusion:These findings suggest that children and adolescents with BD and ADHD tend to be less responsive to drugs used in treatment of acute mania. Clinical Implications · BD in prepubertal children may differ from BD in adolescents. · Evidence-based data concerning the treatment of children and adolescents with BD are lacking. · Comorbidity with ADHD may limit pharmacologic treatment response in children and adolescents with BD.
Limitations
·The metaanalysis included open trials only, with no standardized procedure for clinical assessment of BD and (or) ADHD symptomatology and with heterogeneous study design. · Consequently, the metaanalysis had only 273 subjects, and we could not distinguish between the treatments used in the studies.