Clinical Validation of Eye Vergence as an Objective Marker for Diagnosis of ADHD in Children

• Published in: Journal of attention disorders Vol. 23; no. 6; pp. 599 - 614
• Main Authors: Varela Casal, Paloma, Lorena Esposito, Flavia, Morata Martínez, Imanol, Capdevila, Alba, Solé Puig, Maria, de la Osa, Núria, Ezpeleta, Lourdes, Perera i Lluna, Alexandre, Faraone, Stephen V., Ramos-Quiroga, Josep Antoni, Supèr, Hans, Cañete, Jose
• Format: Journal Article Publication
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01-04-2019
• Subjects: ADHD; Adolescent; Aplicacions de la informàtica; Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity - diagnosis; Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; binocular; Bioinformàtica; biomarker; Biomarkers; Case-Control Studies; Child; children; Convergence, Ocular; Diagnosis; eye vergence; Humans; Infants amb trastorns del desenvolupament; Informàtica; Reproducibility of Results; Trastorn per dèficit d'atenció i hiperactivitat; Àrees temàtiques de la UPC; ADHD; diagnosis; biomarker; binocular; children; eye vergence
• ISSN: 1087-0547; 1557-1246
• DOI: 10.1177/1087054717749931

Objective: ADHD youth show poor oculomotor control. Recent research shows that attention-related eye vergence is weak in ADHD children. Method: To validate vergence as a marker to classify ADHD, we assessed the modulation in the angle of vergence of children (n = 43) previously diagnosed with ADHD while performing an attention task and compared the results with age-matched clinical controls (n = 19) and healthy peers (n = 30). Results: We observed strong vergence responses in healthy participants and weak vergence in the clinical controls. ADHD children showed no significant vergence responses. Machine-learning models classified ADHD patients (n = 21) from healthy controls (n = 21) with an accuracy of 96.3% (false positive [FP]: 5.12%; false negative [FN]: 0%; area under the curve [AUC]: 0.99) and ADHD children (n = 11) from clinical controls (n = 14) with an accuracy of 85.7% (FP: 4.5%; FN: 19.2%, AUC: 0.90). Conclusion: In combination with an attention task, vergence responses can be used as an objective marker to detect ADHD in children.