St. John’s Wort Does Not Seem to Improve A.D.H.D.

From the Journal of the American Medical Association, the results of a randomized controlled trial using St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) to treat children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder:

To our knowledge, this is the first placebo-controlled trial of H perforatum in children and adolescents. The results of this study suggest that administration of H perforatum has no additional benefit beyond that of placebo for treating symptoms of child and adolescent A.D.H.D. In our study, those in the H perforatum group experienced neither more nor fewer adverse events than the placebo group.

It was a fairly small study, and there was some messiness with the randomizing, but it is good to see an RCT used in a case such as this, where the costs are very low for potentially high payoffs.