> The apparent reduction in life expectancy for adults with diagnosed ADHD relative to the general population was 6.78 years (95% CI: 4.50 to 9.11) for males, and 8.64 years (95% CI: 6.55 to 10.91) for females.
It's not clear to me that there is a difference. It looks like the confidence intervals overlap.
You'd need to do a different analysis to decide whether there's a <5% chance of this data being generated by two identical distributions – but if we're not doing that, then we can't conclude that they're different.
This is just pure (somewhat informed) speculation.
ADHD is diagnosed roughly twice as often in men than women, and when diagnosed in women it is much more likely to be of primarily inattentive rather than hyperactive type compared to men. Many suspect ADHD may not actually be rarer in women, but just that the inattentive type is harder to diagnose, and more often never diagnosed- mostly because it is less disruptive to others in school settings.
I speculate that the women that are diagnosed are much more enriched for severe inattentive type ADHD, and I also speculate that inattentive type has a shorter life expectancy than hyperactive type. Just judging from myself, and other adults I know with ADHD: the hyperactive type ones tend to remain really physically active even into old age- unusually so, and the inattentive type tend to have a lot more depression, anxiety, and stress.
Isn't the combined type the most common, or has that type gone away? I find that people that are hyperactive tend to be more impulsive, and if I am not mistaken, impulsivity is the strongest correlated factor in determining longevity in humans. However, I could be wrong about the levels of impulsivity being different. That's just conjecture on my part.
I might be missing something but I think this may just be because women live longer on average. If we assume an equal increase in risk between men and women then women would automatically have a higher reduction in life expectancy.
Women typically live longer, so I was curious if this was a similarly proportional reduction in life expectancy for each group. Current life expectancy in the UK:
78.6 years for males, so 6.78 years is 8.6% of the average life expectancy
82.6 years for females, so 8.64 years is 10.4% of the average life expectancy
I think this is a relatively small difference in effect between the two, but I can't say for certain.
There is a difference in life expectancy in general so it would be remarkable if these are nonzero and the same. (I.e. exact same increase in risk of death at any pre-retirement age for both populations means higher change to life expectancy for women.)
It's not clear to me that there is a difference. It looks like the confidence intervals overlap.