
Some adverse events may increase in frequency or severity over time or may only occur after several months of treatment therefore, at least 100 patients should be exposed to a drug for at least 12 months. The guideline states that since most adverse drug events first occur and are most frequent during the initial months of treatment, approximately 300 to 600 patients should be treated for at least 6 months prior to market availability. The ICH provides specific recommendations on the safety assessment of chronic drugs used in the treatment of non-life-threatening conditions, which includes ADHD.
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Though not binding, these requirements guide clinical trial practice by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
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Guidelines for the safety and efficacy evaluation of drugs are provided by the International Conference on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH). Further, since studies are powered to measure efficacy endpoints, sample sizes may be inadequate to detect rare adverse events related to ADHD medications. Since most trials focus on efficacy measures as primary endpoints, clinical trials testing ADHD medications may be relatively short, resulting in drugs with limited long-term safety or efficacy data. , As a result, although ADHD typically requires long-term treatment, the short-term efficacy of ADHD drugs can be assessed after a brief treatment period, often on the order of days to weeks. The short-term therapeutic response to ADHD medications is upwards of 70%, among the highest of psychiatric medications. ,, Clinicians and patients have a large therapeutic armamentarium to choose from, with over a dozen ADHD medications marketed in a wide array of formulations and delivery systems. , The single most efficacious treatment for reducing symptoms of ADHD are medications and most children diagnosed with ADHD receive pharmacotherapy. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Īs many as 10% of children and adolescents in the United States carry a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), making it one of the most common conditions of childhood. Bourgeois and Mandl were supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1R21HD072382), National Institutes of Health. All relevant data are within the paper or can be accessed via the FDA website ( Funding: Drs. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. Received: ApAccepted: JPublished: July 9, 2014Ĭopyright: © 2014 Bourgeois et al.

PLoS ONE 9(7):Įditor: Harriet de Wit, University of Chicago, United States of America

Citation: Bourgeois FT, Kim JM, Mandl KD (2014) Premarket Safety and Efficacy Studies for ADHD Medications in Children.
