Stimulant treatment and injury among children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: an application of the self-controlled case series study design.

Objective: The aim of the present work was to assess the short-term effects of stimulant medication use on risk of injury among children diagnosed as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Methods: The study group for this self-controlled case series study was children aged 1-18 years old diagnosed as having ADHD who experienced an incident medically-attended injury event and received at least one prescription for stimulant medication between 1993 and 2008 (n=328), identified from The Health Improvement Network primary care database from the UK. Conditional Poisson regression was used to estimate incident rate ratios (IRR) and 95% CIs for injury comparing periods of time exposed to stimulant medication to unexposed periods.