Does childhood experience of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms increase sleep/wake cycle disturbances as measured with actigraphy in adult patients with bipolar disorder?

ABSTRACT

Childhood attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common precursor of adult bipolar disorders (BD). Furthermore, actigraphy studies demonstrate that each disorder may be associated with abnormalities in sleep and activity patterns. This study investigates whether the presence or absence of self-reported childhood experiences of ADHD symptoms is associated with different sleep and activity patterns in adults with BD. A sample of 115 euthymic adult patients with BD was assessed for childhood ADHD symptoms using the Wender Utah Rating Scale (WURS) and then completed 21 days of actigraphy monitoring. Actigraphic measures of sleep quantity and variability and daytime activity were compared between BD groups classified as ADHD+ (n = 24) or ADHD− (n = 91), defined according to established cutoff scores for the WURS; then we examined any associations between sleep–wake cycle parameters and ADHD dimensions (using the continuous score on the WURS). Neither approach revealed any statistically significant associations between actigraphy parameters and childhood ADHD categories or dimensions. We conclude that the sleep and activity patterns of adult patients with BD do not differ according to their self-reported history of ADHD symptoms. We discuss the implications of these findings and suggest how future studies might confirm or refute our findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Bipolar disorder
• attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder
• actigraphy
• sleep
• activity

Acknowledgments

We thank the patients with BD who agreed to participate in this study. We thank the staff at the inclusion sites in Paris Fernand-Widal/Lariboisière and Paris-Creteil.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no financial affiliation or other relationship relevant to the subject matter of this article.

Supplementary material

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by INSERM (Research Protocol C0829), Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Paris (Research Protocol GAN12). This research was also supported by the Investissements d’Avenir program managed by the ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) under reference ANR-11-IDEX-0004 and Fondation FondaMental (RTRS Santé Mentale);Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale;Fondation Fondamental;Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris;Agence Nationale de la Recherche.