Two national cross-sectional surveys of fatigue and its effects in long-distance road transport in Australia showed that stimulant use was a common feature of this industry. Between one in five and one in three drivers reported using stimulants at least sometimes, and a significant proportion reported stimulant use as a most helpful fatigue management strategy. This study reanalyzed the surveys...

This practice parameter describes treatment with stimulant medication. It uses an evidence-based medicine approach derived from a detailed literature review and expert consultation. Stimulant medications in clinical use include methylphenidate, dextroamphetamine, mixed-salts amphetamine, and pemoline. It carries FDA indications for treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and narco...

BACKGROUND Polypharmacy (the concurrent use of more than one psychoactive drug) and other combination interventions are increasingly common for treatment of severe psychiatric problems only partly responsive to monotherapy. This practice and research on it raise scientific, clinical, and ethical issues such as additive side effects, interactions, threshold for adding second drug, appropriate ta...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE There is ongoing concern that stimulant medications may adversely affect growth. In a sample of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) cases and controls from a population-based birth cohort, we assessed growth and the association between stimulant treatment and growth. METHODS Subjects included childhood ADHD cases (N = 340) and controls (N = 680) from a 197...

Stimulant treatment is highly effective in mitigating symptoms associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), though the neurobiological underpinnings of this effect have not been established. Studies using anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in children with ADHD have suggested that long-term stimulant treatment may improve symptoms of ADHD in part by stimulating stri...

OBJECTIVE This study evaluates the validity, inter-rater reliability, and stability over 3 months of a semi-structured telephone interview measuring adherence to stimulant treatment, the Stimulant Adherence Measure, against the Medication Event Monitoring System (MEMS). METHODS Clinic-referred children (N=22, age 11.85 +/- 2.1 yrs) using psychostimulants for DSM-IV attention-deficit/hyperacti...

OBJECTIVES Case reports have raised concerns about the risk of cardiac events associated with central nervous system stimulants for the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. PATIENTS AND METHODS This was a retrospective cohort study that used 10 years (July 1994 to June 2004) of Florida Medicaid claims data cross-linked to Vital Statistics Death Registry data. The cohort was ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the one-year period prevalence of stimulant combination therapy and switching in children/ adolescents with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Quebec, Canada. METHOD Patients aged 6-17 years, with at least two ADHD diagnosis codes documented in different visits and at least 30 days' supply of a stimulant during their most recent one-year observation period ...

BACKGROUND Contingency management interventions that provide tangible incentives based on objective indicators of drug abstinence have improved treatment outcomes of substance abusers, but have not been widely implemented in community drug abuse treatment settings. OBJECTIVE To compare outcomes achieved when a lower-cost prize-based contingency management treatment is added to usual care in c...