Striatal dopamine transporter density in drug naive patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
OBJECTIVE
Dopamine transporters are the target of psychostimulants used for treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate striatal dopamine transporter density in adult patients with ADHD.


METHODS
Twenty patients (11 female, nine male; mean age 35+/-7 years) and 20 control subjects (11 female, nine male, mean age 32 +/- 8 years) were examined with SPECT using the specific radiotracer 123I-FP-CIT. The ratio of striatal to cortical radioactivity concentration was used for semiquantitative evaluation of dopamine transporter binding potential (V3''). There was a significant influence of age (P < 0.001) and a trend towards an influence of gender (P = 0.053) on V3''. An ANCOVA with these covariates showed a slightly higher V3'' in the patients than in the control subjects (4.24 +/- 0.48 vs. 4.03 +/- 0.56; P = 0.02).


CONCLUSIONS
This study provides further in-vivo evidence for an involvement of the dopamine transporter in ADHD. However, compared to previous studies, the increase of dopamine transporter density in the patient group is less pronounced here.
Clinic of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Germany.
Rolf
R
Larisch
Wolfgang
W
Sitte
Christina
C
Antke
Susanne
S
Nikolaus
Matthias
M
Franz
Wolfgang
W
Tress
Hans-Wilhelm
HW
Müller
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000378:metabolism*; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000378:metabolism*; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000378:metabolism*; D050483:Dopamine Plasma Membrane Transport Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011877:Radionuclide Imaging; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals / Q000493:pharmacokinetics
D050483:Dopamine Plasma Membrane Transport Proteins; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals