St. John's Wort No Help in ADHD

June 11, 2008 — -- Despite widespread hope among harried parents that St. John's wort could cure their children's attention problems, a new study says the popular herbal supplement seems to have no effect on the mood disorder.

St. John's wort has been used for centuries as a kind of wonder drug, useful in treating anything from mental conditions to nerve pain, to wounds and burns; the herb was even used in ancient Greece to rid the body of evil spirits.

Today, St. John's wort remains one of the most popular and commonly purchased herbal supplements in the United States. However, like many other types of herbs and herbal supplements, St. John's wort is often used inappropriately to treat health conditions that it hasn't necessarily been proven to treat.

A study released Tuesday suggests that St. John's wort is not a useful treatment for one of the many mood disorders it has been linked to: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

Researchers at Bastyr University in Seattle, Wash., studied 54 children between 6 and 17 years old who have ADHD. What they found was that St. John's wort fell short when it came to improving the children's attentiveness or hyperactivity, when compared to the effects of a placebo.

According to Wendy Weber, the lead study investigator and research associate professor at Bastyr University, the reason her team began this study was because of the high reported use of St. John's wort to treat ADHD in children.

"We are definitely the first group to evaluate the use of St. John's wort for ADHD, and our decision to do so was based on the fact that the public was using it that way," Weber said.

Although Weber and her team reported that the herb was safe for children to use and caused no serious side effects, their study seems to provide hard evidence against the use of St. John's wort for the treatment of ADHD.

Because the herb has a sedative effect on people, St. John's wort has been linked in recent years to the treatment of depression, anxiety disorders and even ADHD. And despite the lack of scientific evidence to support this link between St. John's wort and mood disorders, such as ADHD, this rumor has renewed public interest in the herb.