parenting

A new way to help kids with ADHD: Treat adult ADHD

Adults who have ADHD can benefit from treatment, and some researchers think their kids' ADHD symptoms may get better as a result.

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When a child is diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it can often be a surprise to the parents that one of them has ADHD as well. They may have experienced some of the symptoms but never had the condition diagnosed.

Physicians, however, are usually less surprised because they know that ADHD is a very heritable disorder. According to a 2015 study, if a parent has ADHD, the child has up to a 57 percent chance of having it, and the child’s risk is 32 percent if their sibling has it.

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Christopher Johnston
Christopher Johnston has published more than 3,500 articles in publications including American Theatre, Christian Science Monitor, History Magazine, and Scientific American. His book, Shattering Silences: Strategies to Prevent Sexual Assault, Heal Survivors, and Bring Assailants to Justice (Skyhorse) was published in May 2018. He is a member of the Board of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Researchers Are Discovering How to Predict – and Maybe Treat — Pregnancy Complications Early On.

Katie Love cradles her newborn daughter, born after a bout with preeclampsia.

Courtesy of Love

Katie Love wishes there was some way she could have been prepared. But there was no way to know, early in 2020, that her pregnancy would lead to terrifyingly high blood pressure and multiple hospital visits, ending in induced labor and a 56-hour-long, “nightmare” delivery at 37 weeks. Love, a social media strategist in Pittsburgh, had preeclampsia, a poorly understood and potentially deadly pregnancy complication that affects 1 in 25 pregnant women in the United States. But there was no blood test, no easy diagnostic marker to warn Love that this might happen. Even on her first visit to the emergency room, with sky-high blood pressure, doctors could not be certain preeclampsia was the cause.

In fact, the primary but imperfect indicators for preeclampsia — high blood pressure and protein in the urine — haven’t changed in decades. The Preeclampsia Foundation calls a simple, rapid test to predict or diagnose the condition “a key component needed in the fight.”

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Amber Dance
Amber Dance, PhD, is an award-winning freelance science journalist whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Nature, Science News, Knowable Magazine, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and The Scientist, among others.
A Rare Disease Just "Messed with the Wrong Mother." Now She's Fighting to Beat It Once and For All.

Amber Freed and Maxwell near their home in Denver, Colorado.

Courtesy Amber Freed

Amber Freed felt she was the happiest mother on earth when she gave birth to twins in March 2017. But that euphoric feeling began to fade over the next few months, as she realized her son wasn't making the same developmental milestones as his sister. "I had a perfect benchmark because they were twins, and I saw that Maxwell was floppy—he didn't have muscle tone and couldn't hold his neck up," she recalls. At first doctors placated her with statements that boys sometimes develop slower than girls, but the difference was just too drastic. At 10 month old, Maxwell had never reached to grab a toy. In fact, he had never even used his hands.

Thinking that perhaps Maxwell couldn't see well, Freed took him to an ophthalmologist who was the first to confirm her worst fears. He didn't find Maxwell to have vision problems, but he thought there was something wrong with the boy's brain. He had seen similar cases before and they always turned out to be rare disorders, and always fatal. "Start preparing yourself for your child not to live," he had said.

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Lina Zeldovich

Lina Zeldovich has written about science, medicine and technology for Popular Science, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, the New York Times and other major national and international publications. A Columbia J-School alumna, she has won several awards for her stories, including the ASJA Crisis Coverage Award for Covid reporting, and has been a contributing editor at Nautilus Magazine. In 2021, Zeldovich released her first book, The Other Dark Matter, published by the University of Chicago Press, about the science and business of turning waste into wealth and health. You can find her on http://linazeldovich.com/ and @linazeldovich.

A Fierce Mother vs. a Fatal Mutation

Amber Salzman, whose determination to find a cure for her son's rare disease led to a recently successful clinical trial using gene therapy.

(Courtesy of Salzman)


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Amber Salzman
Amber Salzman currently serves as President and CEO of Adverum Biotechnologies (NASDAQ: ADVM) and as President of The Stop ALD Foundation.
Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women Might Have a New Reason to Ditch Artificial Sweeteners

A mom cradles her newborn baby.

(Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash)


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Bob Roehr
Bob Roehr is a biomedical journalist based in Washington, DC. Over the last twenty-five years he has written extensively for The BMJ, Scientific American, PNAS, Proto, and myriad other publications. He is primarily interested in HIV, infectious disease, immunology, and how growing knowledge of the microbiome is changing our understanding of health and disease. He is working on a book about the ways the body can at least partially control HIV and how that has influenced (or not) the search for a treatment and cure.
A ‘Press Release from the Future’ Announces Service for Parents to Genetically Engineer Their Kids

In the future, parents may have the option to genetically engineer their children, and now is the time to discuss how this powerful technology should (or should not) be used.

(© by pololia/Adobe)


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Jamie Metzl
Jamie Metzl is a leading futurist and the Founder and Chair of OneShared.World, https://www.oneshared.world/. His book, The Great Biohack: Recasting Life in an Age of Revolutionary Technology, will be published in May 2024 by Timber/Hachette. www.jamiemetzl.com.
Which Meds are Safe When You’re Pregnant? Science Wants to Find Out

A pregnant woman is uncertain which medicine is safe to take.

(© gpointstudio/Adobe)


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Pamela Ferdinand
Pamela Ferdinand is a freelance journalist, editor, and author based in Chicago.