The opposite end of the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder continuum: genetic and environmental aetiologies of extremely low ADHD traits.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Although attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is thought to reflect a continuously distributed quantitative trait, it is assessed through binary diagnosis or skewed measures biased towards its high, symptomatic extreme. A growing trend is to study the positive tail of normally distributed traits, a promising avenue, for example, to study high intelligence to increase power for gene-hunting for intelligence. However, the emergence of such a 'positive genetics' model has been tempered for ADHD due to poor phenotypic resolution at the low extreme. Overcoming this methodological limitation, we conduct the first study to assess the aetiologies of low extreme ADHD traits.

Methods

In a population-representative sample of 2,143 twins, the Strength and Weaknesse

SUBMITTER: Greven CU 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4789118 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature