Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESFamilial Clustering of Executive Functioning in Affected Sibling Pair Families With ADHD
Section snippets
Participants
The sample consisted of 104 ADHD siblings aged 6 to 18 years from 52 affected sibling pair families, diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria. In families with more than two affected siblings, the eldest and second eldest siblings were selected.
The 52 affected sibling pairs were a subset of a larger population of ADHD-affected sibling pairs (N = 164) from 106 families who participated in a genome scan study (Bakker et al., 2003). The participants were recruited from families who were referred to
RESULTS
Sibling similarity regarding measures of response inhibition, fine visuomotor functioning, and attentional control was tested per domain of executive functioning. Table 2 gives the mean (SD), partial correlation, significance level, and 95% confidence intervals.
DISCUSSION
In this study, we investigated familial clustering of executive functioning in ADHD-affected sibling pairs. Correlations between siblings were computed for response inhibition, fine visuomotor functioning, and attentional control to investigate whether cognitive correlates of ADHD have a genetic basis. This would provide evidence of a cognitive endophenotype of ADHD. In general, the executive functioning of the siblings was very similar, which suggests that ADHD-related deficits in these
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Supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research grant MW 904-57-094. The authors thank Dr. E. van der Meulen and Prof. Dr. R. B. Minderaa for the recruitment of subjects and collection of data. They are grateful to Dr. J. E. C. Sykes for her comments on the manuscript.
This study was performed at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht and Rudolph Magnus Institute for Neurosciences, the Netherlands.
Correspondence to Dr. D. Slaats-Willemse, Academic Center for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Oost-Nederland, Reinier Postlaan 12, 6525 GC Nijmegen, the Netherlands; e-mail: [email protected].
Disclosure: The ANT assessment program used in the study was purchased from SONAR, Amstelveen, the Netherlands. Dr. De Sonneville is director of this firm. Dr. Buitelaar has received support from and has been a consultant to Eli Lilly, Janssen Cilag BV, and Abbott. The other authors have no financial relationships to disclose.