Study: Teen girls with ADHD more likely than peers to get pregnant

A new Swedish study suggests pregnancy is much more likely for teenage girls with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

According to a report from HealthDay News, researchers in Sweden looked at more than 384,000 women between the ages of 12 and 50 who gave birth from 2007 to 2014.

Of those, about 6,400 had been diagnosed with ADHD, researchers said.

After looking through the data, experts found teenage pregnancies were about six times more likely to happen among women and girls with the disorder, the report said.

Researchers pointed out that those with ADHD were also more likely to have risk factors that could harm their pregnancy, including smoking during the third trimester, morbid obesity and alcohol or drug abuse.

"Women with ADHD may receive inadequate contraceptive counseling in regards to their underlying difficulties," lead researcher Charlotte Skoglund, a clinical neuroscientist with the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told HealthDay News. "They somehow fail to access -- or inadequately respond or act upon -- such counseling."

Doctors suggested parents might want to consult with their child’s gynecologist about forms of birth control that don’t require daily attention, such as a hormone implant or an IUD.