11th May

Team Nijmegen presents - Everything You Didn't Know About ADHD with guest speakers: Mirjam Bloemendaal, Mandy Meijer & Babette Jakobi

ADHD is known as a developmental disorder involving behaviors such as impulsivity and hyperactivity that are guided by brain activity, for example too much activity at the wrong moment. This is only part of the story though, because our behavior and our brains don’t function in isolation, they very much depend on our overall health. Specifically I want to talk about our gut and immune health and how individuals with ADHD seem to have differences for example in gut bacteria. These fluctuations observed between individuals with and without ADHD may have evolved already before birth or in early infancy. Understanding the characteristics of ADHD throughout the body, beyond the brain will help us treat and prevent ADHD.

Our body consists of more than 200 different types of cells, but they all contain the same DNA code. How is it possible that the same code tells the cells to be different? Chemical attachments, DNA methylation, can ‘turn off’ parts of the DNA code that are not needed in a specific cell. This can be influenced by our surroundings, which sometimes leads to diseases. By understanding how our surroundings can influence DNA methylation, we might be able to understand the mechanisms leading to some diseases better and hopefully get better at curing and preventing them. Mandy investigate this for ADHD.