Chewable tablets symptoms and conditions

Both my children, ages 4 and 7, are currently taking Singulair chewable tablets for their seasonal allergies. They have been doing so for about three months. At first, I was not consistent in giving them the medicine. It wasn't until recently that I decided I should give it to them as prescribed, once daily before bedtime. During this time I heard about an incident linking this medication to a suicide. I shrugged it off thinking this could not happen to my children. Little did I know that this medication has other serious side effects linked to it. For the past few weeks, my own 7 year old daughter has experienced many of those side effects including stomache aches, headaches, trouble falling asleep, irritability, mood swings, crying spells, and traumatic nightmares. She used to be a fun loving child who loved waking up to go to school. Now she does not want to get up in the morning and hates going to school. She cries easily over the smallest thing and complains frequently of headaches and stomach aches. My son on the other hand has become overly aggressive and I had concluded that maybe his video games or cartoons were to blame. Well, today I found your website and I will take them both off the medication indefinitely! Their allergies were not as severe to begin with so I figure that they should do okay without it. I will probably look into more natural/ herbal remedies to soothe them when they do get their allergies. I will definitley be reporting back as to their results.

My 2 year old son started taking Singulair chewable tablets last year. I noticed that his behavior changed every day after giving him the medicine. He would become easily excited, run around the house, and act like he didn't have common sense. When I talked to his doctor about this, she thought it might be from the aspartame in the pills. Since he started using the packet powder without aspartame, he has been fine. The medicine really works for treating his asthma. He is now 3. I am concerned about the recent findings. He is too young to tell me how he feels. Has anyone had an experience with aspartame in relation to Singulair?

I have two children on singular as of September 07. When my 6 year old was an infant he was always congested, we changed his formula a couple of times until the doctor decided to do a blood test to check for allergies and the results came back as an allergy to milk. He then started to have sinus infections and had to have his tonsils and adenoids removed. The surgeon said the coughing and the snoring would stop after surgery but it didn't. I was having problems with seasonal allergies myself and was put on Allegra and Veramist so I decided to take him to the allergist as well. He was tested and was also found to have seasonal allergies. Within a day or two after taking the Singulair 4mg chewable tablets he started sleeping through the night with no coughing or sneezing in the middle of the night. My friend just recently had a similar problem with her daughter who is around ten years old. She was found to have asthma but the inhalers that she was put on didn't completely work, so the doctor put her on singulair and her mother said the Singulair is the best. My 14 year old son also has food and seasonal allergies and takes Singulair but not on a daily basis only as needed and he doesn't have any problems.

my daughter has been on Singulair for 4 days now. She is 2 years old and has bad food allergies that cause very bad eczema. She also has been diagnosed with the start of asthma. After going to an allergist, we were told that she should try Singulair and Allegra for a couple of months to treat her seasonal allergies which have been causing coughing at night and skin break-outs, etc. A day or so after she took the medicine ( Singulair chewable tablets- I haven't started the Allegra yet, it seemed like too much for her to be on ) she has been having very loose stools, and quite a few throughout the day. Also she has hive- like bumps on her back. I stopped giving it to her the day before yesterday because the medicine was the only new thing she had been introduced too. The stools seemed to slow down and the hives seemed to be going away, but she was coughing bad last night, so I gave it to her again thinking maybe all she had was a stomach bug. But this morning we made countless potty stops and her back is bumpy again. Does anyone else have this problem?

I'm not sure if this is related to Singulair 5mg. chewable, but now that I've been reading everyone's experiences, I fear that it may. My 7 yr. old has been taking Singulair 5mg chewable tablets these past 2 years. He takes it during the months of Sept. to October. His pulmonologist has not determined whether or not he is an asthmatic or not. When he would get a common cold, he would almost always cough as if he had the croup and he would need to use a nebulizer with Pulmicort. The Singulair worked great. He hasn't needed the Pulmicort for almost a year now and colds this year were limited to two minor sniffles.

My son just started experiencing sharp pains on the left side of his chest. They would come quick and hard and disappear within 2-3 seconds. We immediately rushed him to the Emergency Room. He had experienced 5 quick episodes during Sunday, February 10th. The first 3 were spaced out about 20 minutes apart. the fourth was about an hour apart and the 5th and last occurred 2 hours after. The ER conducted a chest x-ray and an EKG, Neither showed any abnormalities. He felt a quick pain today, which is Tuesday. He has an appointment with a cardiologist on Wednesday morning. Now that I have read a number of postings, I am frightened. My son has not only experienced pains in his chest on the left side, but night sweats. occasional leg cramps. nightmares and is extra sensitive to emotional situations.
I'm pulling him off Singulair. Last night was his last dosage.

my children have just been put on singulair and i'm glad there are sights like this to keep me informed. have a question for those whose children have displayed allergy, ADD and ADHD type symptoms: might these have more to do with the 'inactive' colourants and flavours in the chewable tablets than the active Montelukast sodium itself? and is there a non-coloured alternative?

Im just adding to this column purely because i am a concerned parent, an am taking these notes i read very seriously as my 4yr old child has been taking 4mg Singulair chewable tablets for around 6mnths. I have observed that for some time now she has slowly lost her concentration span an bad behaviour has increased alot, i would like to hear from anyone who could maybe shed a bit more light on the subject for both my daughter an i, as soon i will possibly be taking her off of this medication to just see if there is any change. Good luck to all parents out there who have a similar concern.

My son was 4 when he started singulair chewable tablets for children for his allergies (winter and spring) he took it for 2 months and then we started noticing that he started to stutter/ stammer. His sppech was not like before. He would also make facial expressions like he is trying to force the words out with his eyes looking up. He also became excessively sensitive and emotional. He would cry over anything. He appeared depressed. Then I decided to look into his medication. I looked at a few websites and found other parents had complained about similar side effects - then one smart parent noted that singulair chewable tablets for kids contained large doses of ASPARTAME ! It was clearly labeled on the medication by Merck but to my shock it meant that I was giving my son with each tablet the equivalent of 5 cans of diet coke worth of aspartame ! Turns out aspartame is one of of the most horrendous things to anyone. If you visit websites about the subject you will be shocked at what the popular diet soda sweetner causes. Apparently it was the culprit. I took him off the medication immediately and his speech became normal within a couple of weeks. The same smart parent noted in her posting that she/he had given their child a split adult dose of singulair - since IT DOES NOT CONTAIN ASPARTAME ! apparently they put it in the children dose as a sweetner since it is chewable.... may be worth a try since the medication was very effective with the allergy symptoms - but for me I am gonna have to try to find an alternative...

My now 4 year old daughter has been on the drug, 4mg chewable tablets for children since April 2005. We did not see any personality side effects. The only two things we have noticed is that she started wetting the bed at night. She was dry at night before the drug. And just recently, after 8 months of use she is complaining of tummy aches without any other symptoms. She doesn't feel like she is going to throw up or has cold symptoms, just a tummy ache. We were called by the preschool yesterday to bring her home due to this. She has been complaining off and on of a tummy ache for over a week with no other symptoms, no fever.

We are taking her off of Singulair after reading all the posts in this forum. She takes no other medications.

I'll post back my results to see if her side effects clear up.