FINDINGS

Children who attend day-care centers are about 50 percent less likely to have iron deficiency than children who are not in day care, the researchers found.

Hispanic toddlers were twice as likely than white and black toddlers to be obese and not in day care, possibly explaining their increased risk of iron deficiency, Brotanek said.

Study Counters Idea Of ADHD Overtreatment

Just a third of children meeting the diagnostic criteria for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder are receiving medication, scientists said.

About 9 percent of children in the study, ages 8 to 15, met the criteria for ADHD. That is equivalent to about 2.4 million U.S. children, the researchers reported. Of these, only about a third received medication consistently in the previous year.

About 3 percent of those who did not meet the ADHD criteria were medicated for the disorder, said lead author Tanya Froehlich, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician and researcher at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

"There's a perception that ADHD is overdiagnosed and overtreated, so we wanted to see if that was true among those who met the disease criteria," Froehlich said. "We really wanted to take the best and most accurate look at how common ADHD is."

The study, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, was not funded by a National Institutes of Health grant or by any companies that make ADHD drugs.

The researchers did not evaluate nonprescription treatments such as structured classroom management, parent education or behavioral therapy for the child, Froehlich said.

Poor children were more than twice as likely as their healthy peers to have the disorder, according to the study. Only 16 percent of the poorest children who had met the criteria for diagnosing the illness had received medication for the disease, and they were two-thirds less likely to receive medicine consistently.

-- From News Services