One of the psychiatric disorders that mostly affects boys, up to 3 and 4 times more than girls, is still being investigated. For parents, the first thing is to detect this type of disorders early so that it can be treated properly and avoid possible problems in adulthood, but for researchers and scientists, finding the cause and how to eradicate it is their struggle.
Now, German scientists from the University of Duisburg-Essen have found relationship between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a combination of three mutations of a gene that is associated with hyperactivity, the dopamine transporter. This relationship is found after analyzing 329 families with children affected by this disorder, about 70% showed the same genetic mutations.
The head of the investigation, Johannes Hebebrand, states that children who show the combination detected in both copies of the gene, have 2.5 times more chances of suffering from ADHD, also states that people with a single copy also has almost 2 times more possibilities of developing it, but relieves his words by saying that having these genetic variants does not mean that the disorder will be suffered.
