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from the take^W-play-two-of-these-and-call^W-text-me-in-the-morning dept.
The FDA just approved the first prescription video game:
It might not look like much of a video game, but Akili Interactive's EndeavorRX, formerly Project EVO, may go down in history: it's the first video game that can legally be marketed and prescribed as medicine in the US.
That's the landmark decision from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is authorizing doctors to prescribe the iPhone and iPad game for kids between ages eight and 12 years old with ADHD, after it underwent seven years of clinical trials that studied over 600 children to figure out whether a game could actually make a difference.
According to the company's favorite of the five studies, the answer is yes: one-third of kids treated "no longer had a measurable attention deficit on at least one measure of objective attention" after playing the obstacle-dodging, target-collecting game for 25 minutes a day, five days a week for four weeks.
"Improvements in ADHD impairments following a month of treatment with EndeavorRx were maintained for up to a month," the company cites, with the most common side effects being frustration and headache — seemingly mild compared to traditional drugs, as you'd hope from so-called virtual medicine.
That said, we are talking about a study by doctors who work for the game's developer, according to disclosures at the bottom of the study, and even their conclusion is that the results "are not sufficient to suggest that AKL-T01 should be used as an alternative to established and recommended treatments for ADHD."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Quicksilver on Thursday June 18 2020, @06:43AM (3 children)
Or maybe you could just have them run around the block three times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @03:03PM (2 children)
That's really not a viable alternative, exercises and dietary changes only help so much. At the end of the day, something needs to be done to change the brain or work with the brains quirks or you make very little progress. It's just not tenable to go outside and run around the block a few times every time you need it. Very few places of employment or schools would tolerate that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @04:48PM (1 child)
they have to proof that adhd medication is bad for people that don't have adhd.
if they cannot proof that then adhd medication has to lose prescription status.
thence we are stuck at same dilemma:
normal people boasted by adhd drugs outperforming people with adhd and boasted by drugs ... which is same like if nobody was taking drugs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @10:27PM
They have plenty of evidence that the medications are addictive to people that don't have ADHD. And honestly, you Libertarians are some of the most retarded people on the planet. Too fucking stupid to understand how the world functions and too fucking stupid to have real policy proposals either.