ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER: COMORBIDITIES, EMPHASIS ON CONCURRENCE WITH EPILEPSY

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common cause of behavioral disorders and learning problems at preschool and school ages.
Patients with ADHD are frequently found to have comorbidities that present additional diagnostic and therapeutic problems and result in an even greater decrease in quality of life in patients. Thus, ADHD is frequently concurrent with epilepsy; in this case, not only the manifestations of ADHD are more common in epilepsy, but the latter is more often encountered in patients with ADHD than in those as a whole. The authors consider the epidemiological factors and causes, which may lead to a concurrence of these two diseases in the same patient, the principles of diagnosis and differential diagnosis of ADHD in epileptic patients, the specific features of treatment in this patient category. At the same time, the authors place emphasis on the fact that some antiepileptic drugs, such as barbiturates, may cause symptoms that mimic ADHD (in these cases, inattention and hyperactivity are adverse reactions of therapy and lessen or disappear after drug discontinuation) or enhance the manifestations of ADHD in patients with a concurrence of these two diseases. On the other hand, care should be also taken to choose drugs for the treatment of ADHD due to the possible higher frequency of seizures. So preference should be given to the drugs having no negative effect on the course of comorbidities or those having a positive therapeutic effect against both diseases. 

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