• Fatimah AlAhmari and Mohy Uddin.
• From the Pediatrics Department (AlAhmari), King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre; and from the Research Quality Management Section (Uddin), King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Ministry of National Guard - Health Affairs, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
• Saudi Med J. 2022 Aug 1; 43 (8): 873880873-880.

ObjectivesTo discuss and summarize the scholarly published literature on the difference in obesity rate in treated and untreated attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) patients to evaluate the influence of ADHD medication on weight status in these individuals.MethodsPubMed, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar databases were searched for eligible articles from January to December 2020 using the following medical subject headings (MeSH) terms: "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other hyperactivity disorders", "obesity and overweight", "obesity treatment".ResultsA total of 19,449 study participants included in selected 8 studies were assessed with respect to the prevalence of obesity in medicated and unmedicated subgroups of ADHD patients. The total number of ADHD patients with the prescribed medication was 10,279, while the number of unmedicated ADHD patients was 9,170. The odds ratio was 0.65 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.50 to 0.84 favoring regular medical treatment for management of obesity in case of patients with ADHD.ConclusionThe prevalence of obesity observed in treated ADHD patients was significantly lower compared to that in unmedicated patients. This result suggests that the treatment is not only important for controlling ADHD manifestations but is also associated with lower body mass index. Therefore, further prospective studies with large sample size are required for controlling the confounding factors such as comorbidities and medication status.Copyright: © Saudi Medical Journal.

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