Study population
primary psychiatric, anxiety, epilepsy, chronic neurological disease, Axis-1 disorders, intellectual disability, first-degree, psychosis, ADHD, depression, ADHD DSM-5, DSM-5
RECRUITMENT, EPILEPSY
Recruitment period was between December 2019 and December 2021. Participants (6–12 y/o) were recruited among children who were referred to the ADHD clinic by their pediatricians, general practitioners, teachers, psychologists, or parents. All participants gave verbal assent for participation and their parents provided written informed consent. All study procedures comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. All procedures involving human patients were approved by the Helsinki Committee (IRB) of the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical Center (Jerusalem, Israel). The study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (identifier NCT03104972) and was concluded according to the pre-specified protocol with procedural changes in the trial implementation (see further details in Supplementary Material A power analysis using G-Power [The following inclusion criteria were applied: (1) age between 6–12 y/o; (2) score above the standard clinical cut-off score for ADHD symptoms on the ADHD DSM-5 scales; (3) meeting criteria for ADHD according to DSM-5, using the “gold standard” procedure as described by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which includes a semi-structured interview of the patient and parents by a specialist in pediatric neurology and child development, a neurological examination. Children were excluded from the study if they had one of the following: (1) a chronic neurological disease, epilepsy in the participant or in a first-degree relative, intellectual disability, other chronic conditions, chronic use of medications, or other primary psychiatric diagnosis (e.g., depression, anxiety, psychosis); (2) any Axis-1 disorders, assessed using the Kiddie-SADS-Lifetime Version, Hebrew version, which uses the DSM–5 criteria; (3) girls who began the age of puberty, based on a self- and part-report puberty questionnaire. The tool was translated to Hebrew by the study staff; (4) existence of epileptiform activity based on prospective resting-state electroencephalography performed at screening. EEG records were standardized and recorded with g.Recorder software (gTec, Schiedlberg, Austria), using a 64-channel wireless electroencephalography cap system (g.Nautilus) with gel-based electrodes.