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Do Firstborn Children Have an Increased Risk of ADHD?

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Journal of Attention Disorders: A Journal of Theoretical and Applied Science

Published online on

Abstract

Objective: Although previous reports have found no birth-order influence on ADHD risk, the authors hypothesize that being the firstborn is a risk factor for developing ADHD. Method: They selected all of the currently treated ADHD outpatients (n = 748) from our database. Families with adopted sons, nonnuclear families, and families with only one child and with sons (affected or unaffected) younger than 6 or older than 18 years were excluded. A total of 181 families with 213 ADHD sons met the inclusion criteria. We used all siblings without a clinical diagnosis of ADHD and who had no contact with our service as our unaffected controls (n = 173). Results: The bivariate analysis showed that ADHD was associated with birth order and that firstborn children had nearly twice the ADHD risk of children with other birth orders. Conclusion: birth order can be an ADHD risk factor in clinical samples. (J. of Att. Dis. 2012; XX(X) 1-XX)