Secondhand Smoke, Young Parental Age Can Incease Chance of Developing ADHD

Two new studies found that children exposed to tobacco smoke at home are up to three times more likely to have attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) as unexposed kids and secondhand smoke can increase chance of developing ADHD.

"We showed a significant and substantial dose-response association between (secondhand smoke) exposure in the home and a higher frequency of global mental problems," the authors write in Tobacco Control.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two of every five children in the U.S. are exposed to secondhand smoke regularly.

Alicia Padron of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida and colleagues in Spain analyzed data from the 2011 to 2012 Spanish National Health Interview Survey, in which parents of 2,357 children ages 4 to 12 reported the amount of time their children were exposed to secondhand smoke every day.

Meanwhile, a separate study published online March 26 by the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, found that children born to younger parents have an increased risk for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a large, population-based study suggests.

In an analysis of data from more than 50,000 individuals in Finland, the researchers found that having one parent younger than 20 years increased the risk for childhood ADHD by approximately 50 percent. Children born to families in which both parents were younger than 20 years had almost twice the risk for ADHD.

"Health professionals who work with young parents should be aware of the increased risk of ADHD in offspring," investigators, led by Roshan Chudal, MBBS, MPH, Research Center for Child Psychiatry, Institute of Clinical Medicine and the University of Turku, Finland, write.