Researchers from Cardiff University found that children with ADHD are more likely to have some of their DNA duplicated or missing, which they said was proof that ADHD, like autism and schizophrenia, is a neurodevelopmental disorder.
Lead author Anita Thapar, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the university's School of Medicine, said, 'Too often people dismiss ADHD as being down to bad parenting or poor diet. Now we can say with confidence that the condition is a genetic disease and the brains of children with ADHD develop differently to those of other children.'
The researchers analysed the genetic make-up of 366 children aged five to 17 with ADHD against 1,000 control samples from the 1985 British Birth Cohort to look for variations common in children with the condition.
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