Loving child symptoms and conditions

My eight year old son was diagnosed with mild asthma by our GP and was taking Ventolin for a persistent cough. When this didn't relieve the cough the doctor prescribed Singulair. He started the Singulair in March 2009 and within 2 months we realized that his personality had dramatically changed. It has taken us a while to figure out what was going on because eight year old boys are starting to assert themselves more and I think the side effects have been escalating over the last month. He was angry most of the time, very hateful towards his siblings, saying very dark, nasty, hurtful things. He argued every time we asked him to do something and would snap into a screaming inconsolable emotional wreck at the drop of a hat many times a day over trivial or imagined problems. He was having nightmares and bursts of hyperactivity that were overwhelming. He told us he felt frustrated all the time and hated everything. When we tried to calm him he was unreachable. Just yesterday he had his fist clenched and pulled back ready to punch me when I was trying to help him with a computer problem. He was shaking and his face was contorted with rage and he just wasn't my little boy anymore.
It has been devastating for our family and we were ready to take him to a psychologist. He is normally an incredibly considerate, perceptive, loving child, highly intelligent, helpful and fun loving with a great sense of humor.
He has also complained of leg pains and has been wetting the bed again. It was only yesterday that I began reading about other people's side effects and have taken him off Singulair as of last night. Whilst he has still been argumentative today already the aggressive intensity seems to be easing.
I am absolutely mortified that I allowed this to happen to my son and my family and I am so grateful to others for sharing their experiences.
We still need to address his asthma and will make an appointment with a specialist next week, but given his asthma is so mild he should not have ever had to suffer these side effects.
I only hope now that he has not sustained any long term effects and that his younger brother has not been scarred by the truly horrible things that my son has said to him.

I have a 26-month old grandson who has been on Singulair for "27 DAYS". His pediatrician knows that his immune system is already compromised due to some developmental delays. However, before he started taking his Singulair he was a very happy, funny and loving child. Within 2 weeks on this medicine we started to notice a few changes in him. He started waking up at night "screaming" and he has been sleeping through the night for at least a year now. And when his mother would go in to get him out of his crib, he would be so frightened and afraid to leave her side. It would take her a very long time to settle him down and put him back down for the night. At the same time, he started not wanting to drink his normal daily glasses of milk or eat his regular meals. He was simply a mess most of the day and would fuss, cry, bang his head and we were having a very hard time trying to figure out what was wrong with him. He is not yet talking due to his delayed speech, so he could not tell us what was going on. Yesterday, I told my daughter let's look at the side effects of Singulair since it was the only thing that had changed within the last few months. When I found this site, I could not believe what the parents/grandparents were saying about their children on this drug. We immediately took him off Singulair. This will be his second day without being on the drug. According to my pharmacist, it will take approximately 50 hours for it to get out of his little system. The pharmacist had not heard the latest that aired on the TV station, so she asked me to call her back in a few days to tell her how my grandson is doing. Parents should be able to trust the medications that are prescribed by their Pediatricians, especially at such young ages. My daughter is REALLY UPSET and has a call into my grandson's doctor. Thank God I found this website. I simply searched on "side effects of Singulair in children" and this site came up. I do believe the Lord is watching over my grandson. Thanks.

My 7 year old son was put on singulair 7 months ago and the behavior changes that have since occurred are incredible. While he has always been temperamental it was never to this degree. The most minor situation can cause an outburst that will continue for 30 minutes or more. Some days the rage and tears are endless. My older son was on singulair for years because of his asthma with no problems. I am so grateful to have found this site and information. I took my son off the singulair 3 days ago and I am hopeful that things will start to improve.

My 15 month old son was just put on this Friday, four days ago. He had been on Zyrtec since he was five months old and his allergies had recently gotten worse along with a percistant cough. As the weekend went on he became more and more angry and fidgety. Sunday afternoon, after his nap he came running down the hall screaming and crying (this nap is usually 1 1/2 hours long and he had only been asleep for 30 to 45 minutes when this happened). He was very upset for about 20 minutes. He is normally a very happy, fun loving child. Later that afternoon he didn't get his way and took it out on me. He began to kick and scream(at the top of his lungs) , throwing his head back, and then hitting me. Everyone that was with us have been around him from day one and they all said how he wasn't himself and had never seen him act this way. Now, this morning on our drive into town to go to daycare he normally is talking the whole way (45 minutes) but this morning he was just staring off out the window and didn't want to talk or "have a conversation" with me. I knew something wasn't right and had already had it in my head he wasn't getting another dose of this. I found this site and some of the little things began to jump out at me and I know for sure we aren't going to take this again. I just hope and pray that this hasn't caused any lasting side effects, again he has only been on it for 4 days. After reading all of this I have called the daycare to check and the doctor, who hasn't called me back yet. Going to see his ENT tomorrow and we will be having a long conversation about it all. His ped. is the doctor who put him on it. She is trying to try everything before he is put on a nebulizer.

Another side effect named on the Singulair web site is ear infections. This med. should have never been given to my son who has already had one round of tubes because of ear infections. The tubes have already fallen out and within a week he had an ear infection.

I have posted a few times. My daughter started taking singulair 11-17-2003 and I stopped it 3-28-2008. She is the one that dropped out of dance and cheerleading, withdrew from old friends and family, headaches, stomachaches, missing school with this, depressed, anxiety attacks and CUTTING her self under her clothes. 6 months with a psychiatrist did not help. She is now about 80% back from the darkness. She is so much better and is such a loving child, She is not cutting, has a part time job, and has passed all her classes with 3 A's, 1 B, and 2 C's. BUT there are learned behaviors while in the darkness that still show up. Not every day but they are there. She has been pushed off her life path. I am hanging on to her with all my might and I know that I will get her through college and she will have the tools to be self reliant and happy BUT what could she have been if I never gave her singulair???? I can not help but feel guilty to what I have done to this child

I am so glad that I found this page. My son is 7 and has been taking Singulair for a little over a year. I thought his behavioral issue and personality changes were from things that little kids go through. I kept putting it off as it is just a phase. He also for the last 9-10 months has been tired, weak, tummy pain, head ache, vomiting. I took him to the doctor and she did blood work on him to make sure that he didn't have anything serious. Everything came back fine. So I found this site over the weekend and I told my nurse about it. She said take him off it and see what happens. He was on it to help inflammation that caused severe ear pain. Next week he goes to see an ENT. I feel like I have been poisoning my child. I so hope that he returns to the fun, loving child he once was!!! How long does it take to get out of their system, does anyone know? Thanks for all the postings I am so glad I found this!!!!

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 daughter was on singulair for about 2 years, off and on. Being a teenager, we thought some of the behavior problems were just a "teen" thing. She became dispondent, wanting to sleep all the time. She was hateful and resentful towards her family. She became depressed and talked of suicide. I didn't know what to do. We sought depression counciling.
My mother called me to tell me of the news report she saw. It described what we were going thru exactly!!!
I would NEVER have dreamed an allergy drug could have taken away my loving child and left a terror in its wake!
She has been off the drug for a few weeks now, and I can see a HUGE difference in her behavior. She is getting back to her old self. She told me she didn't realize just how bad it was until she stopped the drug and now feels so very good (read normal!). How terrible!
Even as I am typing this a singulair comercial is playing on TV. How DARE they!
Money and lawsuits will not bring back the years our children have lost, but big companies only respond when "profits" are involved. If there is a lawsuit, I too want no money from it. I do, however, want the drug company to have to pay and pay dearly for what they have done. The money could go to a children's charity.
Maybe the drug company didn't know before, but they know now and the drug is still being sold!

Here is some perspective for you all. I take Singulair and do well on it and in ACTUAL studies it has one of the safest safety records. Understand that post marketing reporting does not mean there is a correlation between the event and the product. Throughout the life of a drug the companies must disclose any report of side effects reported to them REGARDLESS of causality. A popular antihistamine that is OVER THE COUNTER also has suicidal thinking/behavior listed in its post marketing section. However, just because patients who had reported having these thoughts while taking the product doesn't mean it was a result of the product! Maybe they had a depressive personality and were also on multiple other medicines to treat that. You must look at the "Adverse Reactions, Warnings and Precautions" sections of package inserts to see the side effects that were actually seen in studies. You can die from ulcers derived from over use of aspirin or ibuprofen. Decongestants can throw off your blood pressure and these events are documented in actual studies! Listen to your bodies when taking any med. If you feel differently report it to your doctor.

These are all drugs people, there are potential side effects. There are also side effects to those "natural" over the counter remedies that are not nearly as regulated by the FDA or studies by the drug companies.

To anyone out there who has experienced side effects to singulair timed to when you started it, talk to your doctor, stop taking it and see if it goes away. Same advice for any product prescription or over the counter medicine. Side effects can be a combination of many factors (what other meds are you taking?) But understand for many people this product is the safest and most effective treatment for them. The FDA and Merck are reviewing all information to see if there is any correlation to the reporting. But singulair been around for about 10 years and prescibed to billions of people and is known to be one of the safer medicines out there overall.

In between the legitimate posts on this site I get the sense there is a lot of ambulance chasing going on. People looking to cash in on this big drug companies. We want drugs, we want them cheap and with no side effects which is not a reality. Keep stepping up the regulation and make the companies hire more lawers to protect themselves and jump through even more hoops and see what happens to the price and access to new meds. Even better, see how regulation has impacted the development of new medicines around the world (here's a tip, it will dramatically decrease). Drug companies certainly aren't perfect but which industry is?

Please, when taking any medicine over the counter, prescription or herbal supplement listen to your bodies to see if the potential benefits of the product outway the risks or side effects. Report any changes to your doctor.

I'm just heartbroken over this. My 6-year old identical twin boys have been on Singulair for 4 years to help control severe asthma. Looking back...I now realize there was a definite "personality" change in both of them after going on it. I've been living with it for 4 years now and have just "gotten used to it." Since October, one of my sons has experienced severe back pain, abdominal pain, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes (though I don't know if this is related), and sadness. I have put him through tests because I just knew something was wrong - he has had an MRI spine, CT chest, abdominal ultrasound, and lymph node biopsy (all negative). I am just crushed because I wonder if I have put him through these tests for absolutely NO reason. That all along, it has been the Singulair. My other son has had insane mood swings for the past 4 years and I had just chalked it up to his personality. He can be extremely mean to his brother and has indicated to me that sometimes he just doesn't "want to be."

The only positive thing out of this is that I learned how insightful my pediatrician is. He took both boys off the Singulair about 6-8 weeks ago. I have noticed a slight improvement in his symptoms, but they have not yet all gone away. I'm hoping there's not lasting damage...

My daughter who is 8 has been taking singulair for about 3 years. Her behavior has changed so much and the doctors said it was normal kid things......
She went from a sweet child to one who seems to have these horrible mood swings which cause her to lash out and say mean things, nobody loves her, she wants to run away, she hates me. She gets so angry and slams doors and acts like a child having a tantrum. She has had stomach problems which we went to doctors/specialists for a year......stomach aches at night/sometimes 24 hours a day. She has nightmares and wants me to sleep with her. She does not want to open her curtains because she thinks monsters will come in the windows. She has bad OCD related to germs. She now wants me to go with her when she plays at a neighbors house, she seems to want to know I am close by.
She is very independent and to start this clingy behavior this past year is not normal.
A relative is a doctor and thought my daughter has a touch of ADH but she is honor roll and very well behaved in school so maybe my relative is noticing anxiety in her. I need to call the doctor today and take her off this. I don't know if there is another medication to put her on or if she should be on it. She takes qvar and abuterol inhaler along with claritin D.
I just feel sick reading all these horror stories. I was being told her behavior is normal tantrums to get our attention. Now I know none of this is true.