Norwegian nationwide population study finds no link between maternal coffee consumption during pregnancy and offspring neurodevelopmental difficulties, including ADHD

Background:

Our understanding of Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has grown and evolved considerably since it first appeared in the DSM-II as “Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood.”  This study aimed to find the disorder’s placement within the modern psychopathology classification systems like the Hierarchical Taxonomy Of Psychopathology (HiTOP). 

The HiTOP model aims to address limitations of traditional classification systems for mental illness, such as the DSM-5 and ICD-10, by organizing psychopathology according to evidence from research on observable patterns of mental health problems.. Is ADHD best categorized under externalizing conditions, neurodevelopmental disorders, or something else entirely? A recent study by Zheyue Peng, Kasey Stanton, Beatriz Dominguez-Alvarez, and Ashley L. Watts takes a closer look at this question using a symptom-focused approach.

The Study:

Traditionally, ADHD has been associated with externalizing behaviors, such as impulsivity and hyperactivity, or with neurodevelopmental traits, like cognitive delays. However, this study challenges the idea of placing ADHD into a single category. Instead, it maps ADHD symptoms across three major psychopathology spectra: externalizing, neurodevelopmental, and internalizing.

The findings reveal that ADHD symptoms don’t fit neatly into one box. For example, symptoms like impulsivity, poor school performance, and low perseverance were strongly associated with externalizing behaviors. On the other hand, cognitive disengagement (e.g., daydreaming, blank staring) and immaturity were closely linked to neurodevelopmental challenges. Interestingly, cognitive disengagement also showed ties to internalizing symptoms, such as anxiety or depression.

This research underscores the complexity of ADHD. Rather than treating ADHD as a single, unitary construct, the study advocates for a symptom-based approach to better understand and treat individuals. By acknowledging that ADHD symptoms relate to multiple psychopathology spectra, clinicians and researchers can move toward more nuanced classification systems and targeted interventions.

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Conclusion: 

Ultimately, this study highlights the need for modern systems to move beyond rigid categories and adopt a more flexible, symptom-focused framework for understanding ADHD’s place in psychopathology.

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The Background:

Caffeine and its primary breakdown compounds – paraxanthine, theophylline, and theobromine (also the primary alkaloid in chocolate) – readily cross the placenta and tend to linger due to the underdevelopment of fetal caffeine metabolizing enzymes.

Could accumulating caffeine metabolites harm the developing fetal brain? Studies to date have come to contradictory conclusions, some finding an association, others finding none.

Norway has a national single-payer health insurance system with a national health registry comprehensively tracking virtually all residents.

The Methods:

An international study team used Norways’s registry, and its Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) to explore the relationship between maternal and paternal coffee consumption and offspring neurodevelopmental difficulties (ND), including symptoms of ADHD as determined from validated rating scales, using 58,964 mother-child pairs and 22,576 father-child pairs, covering the decade 1999-2008.

Unadjusted results indicated a strong association between maternal coffee consumption before and during pregnancy with offspring ADHD, but none with paternal coffee consumption. Superficially, that might seem like compelling evidence.

Yet after adjusting for education, income, smoking, and alcohol, “previously significant effects attenuated towards zero and some associations switched from being positive to negative.”

Then, after further adjusting for genetic confounding, ADHD symptoms at 1.5 years, 3 years, 5 years (on both of two different rating scales), and 8 years (including separate measures of inattention and hyperactivity symptoms) all became indistinguishable between offspring from mothers consuming coffee during pregnancy and offspring of mothers abstaining from coffee during pregnancy. 

Conclusion:

The team concluded, “This study applied several conventional and genetic epidemiological approaches to investigate the potential relationship between maternal coffee consumption during pregnancy and offspring NDs [neurodevelopmental difficulties]. When considering the results of the conventional and genetic epidemiological analyses, as well as the broader literature, we conclude that there is little evidence that maternal coffee consumption during pregnancy is strongly causally related to offspring NDs.”

More specifically, the team found no evidence of any causal relationship with offspring ADHD. 

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There has been consistent evidence of an association between ADHD and subjectively reported sleep problems even in patients not medicated for the disorder. There have also been studies using wrist-worn actigraphy (a wrist watch-like device that measures gross motor activity) and sleep lab-based polysomnography that measure objective sleep parameters. 

What has been missing are large population-based cohort studies to explore the prevalence rates of different sleep disorders and medical prescriptions in ADHD. 

Methods Used: 

Sweden has a single-payer health insurance system and a series of national population registers that track virtually its entire population. Using the Swedish Total Population Register, a local research team created a cohort of all 6,470,658 persons born between 1945 and 2008. They linked this to the Swedish National Patient Register, which includes inpatient hospitalizations from 1975 to 2013, and outpatient specialist diagnoses from 2001 to 2013, to identify diagnoses of sleep disorders. They also linked to the Prescribed Drug Register, covering 2005 to 2013, to identify prescriptions for sleep medications. 

Summary of Findings: 

Overall, persons with ADHD were eight times more likely to be diagnosed with any sleep disorder relative to normally developing peers. Broken down by age, adolescents with ADHD were 16 times more likely to receive such diagnoses, young adults (18-30) twelve times more likely, children and mid-age adults (31-45) eight times more likely, and older adults six times more likely. 

Broken down by specific sleep disorder diagnoses, relative to normally developing peers, persons with ADHD were: 

• Five times more likely to have sleep terrors and seven times more likely to have nightmares. 

• Six times more likely to sleepwalk. 

• Seven times more likely to have restless leg syndrome. 

• Sixteen times more likely to have insomnia. 

• Nineteen times more likely to have disorders of sleep/wake schedule (circadian rhythms). 

• Twenty times more likely to have hypersomnia (excessive sleeping). 

• Over seventy times more likely to exhibit narcolepsy (daytime sleepiness) and cataplexy (sudden loss of muscle tone leading to collapse). 

As for sleep medication, relative to normally developing peers, persons with ADHD were: 

• Seven times more likely to be prescribed the hypnotic zolpidem (Ambien). 

• Eight times more likely to be prescribed the hypnotic zopiclone or the antihistamine propriomazine. 

• Ten times more likely to be prescribed the sedative and hypnotic zaleplon (Sonata). 

• Fourteen times more likely to be prescribed any sleep medication. 

• 37 times more likely to be prescribed melatonin, the body’s natural sleep-inducing hormone, which is a prescription medication in Europe. 

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Conclusion: 

The team concluded, “Our findings also suggest that greater clinical attention should be directed towards addressing sleep problems in individuals with ADHD. This entails implementing proactive measures through sleep education programmes and providing both pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy and parental sleep training.” 

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