EEG improvements with antiepileptic drug treatment can show a high correlation with behavioral recovery in children with ADHD

Abstract

We investigated the relationship between neuropsychological disturbance, assessed using the global assessment of functioning (GAF) and the ADHD-rating scale (ADHD-RS), paroxysmal EEG abnormalities, and treatment with valproate sodium (VPA) in children with both attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and paroxysmal abnormality (PA). Participants with ADHD but without obvious epilepsy were recruited between April 1, 2003 and March 31, 2008. Paroxysmal abnormality was scored by measuring the spike frequency. Of 46 children, 16 showed PA; 3 of the 16 were excluded because no follow-up EEG was available. The EEG improved with VPA treatment in 5 of 8 patients with frontal PA and 3 of 5 patients with rolandic PA. While 83.3% of the patients with improvements in both assessments had frontal PA, only 16.7% had rolandic PA. The patients with frontal PA showed a significantly higher correlation between PA frequency and improvement in ADHD-RS compared with those with rolandic PA. In this study of children with ADHD, EEG improvement with antiepileptic drug treatment showed a high correlation with behavioral improvements as shown by ADHD-RS and GAF scores. However, this was not a population-based study, and the relative importance of detecting and treating PA in ADHD has yet to be determined.