Study shows near-tripling of global ADHD drug use

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The use of drugs to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, has more than tripled worldwide since 1993, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

And spending on such drugs rose nine-fold between 1993 and 2003, the team at the University of California, Berkeley reported.

"ADHD could become the leading childhood disorder treated with medications across the globe," Richard Scheffler, an expert in health economics and public policy who led the study, said in a statement.

"We can expect that the already burgeoning global costs for medication treatment for ADHD will rise even more sharply over the next decade."

Roughly one in 25 U.S. children and adolescents is taking medication for ADHD, the researchers found.

They used an international pharmaceutical database to examine data from nearly 70 countries. In 1993, 31 countries used ADHD drugs, but by 2003 that number had risen to 55, they found.

France, Sweden, Korea and Japan all showed increases in ADHD drug use among 5- to 19-year-olds.

"The usage of ADHD medications increased 274 percent during the study period," Scheffler's team wrote in the journal Health Affairs.

The United States led the pack, accounting for 83 percent of the prescriptions and $2.4 billion in 2003. Canada and Australia also had much heavier use than the researchers predicted.