A medical examiner says long-term use of Ritalin, a drug used to treat hyperactive children, may have led to a 14-year old boy's death.

Matthew Smith collapsed at his home on March 21 while playing with a skateboard and was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Oakland County Medical Examiner Ljubisa Dragovic concluded that the boy died of a heart attack likely caused by 10 years of taking Ritalin for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

"This was a gradual development," Dragovic said Sunday in The Oakland Press. "There were changes that occurred in the small blood vessels that supply the heart muscle.

Smith's family told Dragovic the teen-ager occasionally complained of chest discomfort and racing heart, sings that something was wrong, the medical examiner said.

"This is not a heart condition, which could have been diagnosed just like that," Dragovic said. "You just don’t see this in the younger population."

(…) Ritalin is a popular brand name for the stimulant methylphenidate, believed to increase a child's alertness by stimulating the central nervous system.

(…) "This is something that we have to share with the public and the professional people, too, that there is a great risk," Dragovic said. "There are millions receiving Ritalin and so few tests. Statistically it is not significant, but it is for that boy and his family."