Special diets should be a standard treatment for all children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), say researchers. Skip related content
The recommendation stems from work showing a link between food allergies and the condition that causes children to be over-active, impulsive and inattentive.
In the latest study, scientists looked at the effect eliminating certain foods from the individually-tailored diets of children aged four to eight with ADHD.
Fifty children were given the "elimination" diet while another 50 were put on a general healthy diet. further tuning of the diets then took place based on blood tests showing immune responses to 270 different foods.
Children with the restricted diet showed significant improvements in their ADHD symptoms, the researchers reported in The Lancet medical journal.
The authors, led by Professor Jan Buitelaar, from Radboud University, the Netherlands, wrote: "We think that dietary intervention should be considered in all children with ADHD, provided parents are willing to follow a diagnostic restricted elimination diet for a five-week period, and provided expert supervision is available.
"Children who react favourably to this diet should be diagnosed with food-induced ADHD and should enter a challenge procedure, to define which foods each child reacts to, and to increase the feasibility and to minimise the burden of the diet."
Drugs or behavioural treatments should be considered for children who do not respond to a dietary approach, said the researchers.
But Professor David Daley, from the Institute of Mental Health at the University of Nottingham, said it would be "premature" to assume that dieting can tackle ADHD.
"We need to know more about how expensive the intervention is, how motivated parents need to be to make it work, and how easy it is for parents to get their ADHD child to stick to the diet," he said.