Background: Reading disorder (RD) is one of the important complaints in children with learning disorders (LD) that is prevalent in 4% of children in the United States. Treating this disorder includes education of reading practices and treating psychological disorders, and there are no exact medications prescribed in these children. Memantine has been effective in treating memory problems in Alzheimer Dementia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, autism disorder, and other psychological diseases. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of memantine in improving RD in children.
Materials and methods: In this randomized clinical trial, 62 children, with RD in Pediatric Psychiatry Clinics of Noor and Ali-Asghar Hospital in Isfahan from 2015 to 2016, were participated. They were randomly assigned to two groups of equal number, one receiving education plus memantine and the other education plus placebo. RD was evaluated at the beginning, 1 and 3 months after intervention by Iranian standard reading and dyslexia test (Nama).
Results: Mean (standard deviation) age of participants was 7.55 (0.60) years. Most of the participants were boy (55%), most having parents in 36-45-year-old age group (52% and 48% for fathers and mothers, respectively), and also most parents in diploma and bachelor educational group (61% and 60% for fathers and mothers, respectively). There were statistical significant difference in trend of total score (P = 0.034), word chain (P < 0.001), rhyming (P < 0.001), text comprehension (P < 0.001), and letter fluency (P = 0.002), subscale between two groups. However, the difference of time trend between two groups was not significant in word reading (P = 0.14), word comprehension (P = 0.06), phoneme deletion (P = 0.12), reading nonwords (P = 0.32), and category fluency (P = 0.06).
Conclusion: Adding memantine to educational practices is effective in improving RD in school-age children with LD.
Keywords: Dyslexia; learning disorder; memantine.