News story symptoms and conditions

I am a few days away from my 19th birthday and i've been taking Yasmin since the age of 11. I was diagnosed with PCOS when i was 11 and Yasmin has been what's keeping my period regular and more or less pain free since then. In May of 2008 i was switched to the generic version of Yasmin called, Ocella and started to notice more and more symptoms and side effects. My stomach pain in the mornings grew greater by the day and when i was on my sugar pill i would gain an unbearable migraine. Thinking it was just part of being a woman i ignored it and went about my life. It wasn't until December of 2008 while out with a group of friends i came into some serious stomach pain. thinking it was just a typical stomach ache that i normally got i ignored it. when i came to be about 4 am and the pain hadn't stopped i started to worry. first thing in the morning i went to the doctor who referred me to get an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed that i had gall stones and that i should have my gall bladder removed before more complications were to occur. Being a college student only a week away from returning to my second semester i opted to wait until spring break to have the surgery. During the 3 month wait i experience extreme diarrhea whenever something was put in my mouth, extreme stomach pain, heartburn, nausea, headaches, sore muscles, the list goes on and on i felt like i had been hit by a truck every day and i still had to go to class. in March of 2009 i had my gall bladder removed thinking that the symptoms would finally stop i returned to school only to find that nothing got better. It's been 7 months since my gall bladder has been removed and i'm still having the same symptoms as before and now i've added depression, stress, lack of energy and interest and many other things to the list. I'm still taking Ocella because i've never been advised otherwise but the symptoms are taking over my life. I am a sophomore majoring in electrical engineering at college and it's just become harder and harder to focus on my work or to enjoy the aspects of college that i should be with the frequent trips to the bathroom or having to opt out of a fun activity because of stomach pain. I was wondering if anyone can help me, maybe point me in a direction where i can get better and get back to enjoying what a 19 should be. Thanks.

I am so grateful to have found this site and to everyone who has posted. My 20-yr-old daughter received her first dose in Feb. 09. About a week later she began feeling extremely fatigued and weak. She was diagnosed with mono even though the mono test came back negative. She recovered from the fatigue and weakness prior to the 2nd shot in late April/early May. Soon after that she began complaining of hair loss. She was diagnosed with alopecia areata and our doctor put her on a different oral birth control pill. Her hair loss has continued, she has a fairly large bald spot on the back of her head just below the crown and her hair is very thin all over, especially just above her forehead. She will NOT be having the 3rd shot. She is starting to get some regrowth just above her forehead, regrowth on the bald spot on the back of her head is much slower. The hardest part is not knowing if or when her hair will regrow. I had not considered Gardisil as a potential cause for this until after I watched the ABC News story on Aug. 18, 09. I hope that all of you girls and young women will fully recover from your symptoms, and thanks to all who have posted here. Sincerely, B. C, Tualatin, OR

My 7 yr old daughter has been off of Singulair for 12 days now. The change in her personality is amazing. She experienced two nights of strange dreams and waking in the middle of the night. We put her back on Flovent once a day as a substitute. Her aggression and frustration went away within days. She is so happy and content with herself. I can see that she is no longer frustrated by emotions that she could not explain. She's silly, funny, happy. She no longer hates us, pulls her hair, or tries to slap herself because she's thinks she deserves it. She has been on the drug since she was 3-1/2. We were doing family therapy to try to help her. This is no longer needed. She's back to her old self. What a shame no one warned us of this potential side effect. I also wondered how I missed the news story since I just found this site in September 2008. The news story about Singulair came out in March - just around Spring Break. Since we were out of the country, I missed the news. Isn't that a convenient time of the year to break a story? I'm sure many other families missed the news.

this might help anyone who is looking for more information. This site is trying to get the FDA to investigate more into this drug:
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Under the "documents uncovered" area, it lists SEVERAL woman who have been hospitalized from this shot from Jan. 2008. Very scary stuff.

also, a post the one of my friends sent me from a news story:

10 deaths have been linked to Gardasil since September 2007, and there have been 140 reports so far this year of serious side effects such as miscarriage and Guillain-Barré syndrome.

Well. We’ve already lost 18 girls, some as young as 12, in the effort to spare them from the mere possibility of cervical cancer later in life. Others have developed debilitating and potentially life-threatening ailments within weeks of being vaccinated, and others still have had spontaneous abortions or given birth to babies with birth defects.

Also consider this: Cervical cancer usually develops in your late 20s to mid 30s. The protection period of Gardasil is estimated to be 5 years. That means, if you receive your first set of shots when you’re 10 years old, you’d need at least 2 to 4 additional booster shots to make it through your 30s. And THAT means you’ll have to expose yourself to the potential side effects of Gardasil over and over and over again.

But now to the real clincher, and I want you to read the following section as many times as you need to let this truly sink in…

U.S. statistics show there are 30 to 40 cervical cancer cases per year per one million women between the ages of 9 and 26, which is the age bracket that Gardasil targets (and was tested on).

According to Merck, Gardasil was shown to reduce pre-cancers by 12.2% to 16.5% in the general population. So, instead of ending up with 30 to 40 cases of cancer per million, per year, in that age bracket, the HPV vaccine can potentially bring it down to 26 to 35 cases of cervical cancer.

What that means is that you would have to vaccinate one million girls to prevent cervical cancer in 4 to 5 girls.

Further, about 37 percent of women who develop cervical cancer actually die from the disease, so vaccinating ONE MILLION girls would prevent 1 to 2 DEATHS per year, at the bargain-basement price of $360 million per year, plus potentially lifelong suffering for an untold number of women, which has no price tag.

Is this REASONABLE?

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Oh my god!!!! My poor daughter. My daughter Karilynn has been taking this drug for about 8 months now. She is 2 1/2 years old now. All of the sudden she had a drastic change in behavior, sleep and eating patterns. She began with sleep problems. She would wake up in the middle of the night screaming that the green monsters were after her. I chocked it up to night terrors that weren't explained. Then she started waking up screaming that her "bottom" hurt but would point to her stomach. She quit eating, cried all the time, started acting out randomly. My little girl who had never had discipline problems started randomly hitting and biting me. It wasn't even when I would discipline her for something. She would literally come up and bite me out of no where. She throws huge tantrums now. The daycare lady even asked me if something was going on at home because she was doing strange things there also. Not knowing what was wrong (but trusting my mother instinct that there was SOMETHING wrong) I started to think that maybe she was being abused. The night mares, the random pain.... I even had a breif moment where I thought my grandmother was hurting her. I want to throw up thinking about that now. I took her to the pediatrician, who ran every test imaginable to "rule out any physical reason" that could be causing all of these symptoms at once. Test after test came back negative. I actually have the number to the psychologist that does "play therapy" sitting in front of me because we were seriously terrified that someone was hurting her. Little did I know it was us!!!! I called tha asthma dr. yesterday after seeing the news story and he told me that my concerns weren't really valid and that it sounded like she was being a "typical" two year old. That really made me angry. After reading all of these accounts there is very little doubt in my mind that it is the medicine. It all makes sense now. Halleluah if it is such a simple fix!!! I was worried my daughter was being ABUSED!!!! What an unimaginable feeling for any parent!! I quit the singulair last night against the asthma doctors "urging" and gave the daycare lady a heads up. Its sad to say but I pray this is all that is wrong with my little girl!!! If someone files a class action suit please let me know. Also if there is anything more I can do to make sure someone else doesn't go through this let me know!!!!!

I can't imagine the FDA getting involved because of only *one* suicide (though the loss of even one life is terrible). The FDA usually turns a blind eye to what pharmaceutical companies do unless there have been enough complaints or enough evidence to convince them that they must step in.

I came to this board in late February--a full two to three weeks prior to the big news story earlier this week--simply looking for a reason for my son's insomnia. There were already over 1000 posts here on the Singulair board, nearly all of which listed the same side effects: fits of rage, depression, insomnia, and suicidal thoughts. I had never dreamed that my son's fits of rage and depression were linked to Singulair--I had assumed it was all part of being 17 and having normal teenage stresses and hormonal surges. He stopped taking the Singulair right then (back in late February), and the difference in him is astounding. He is much more outgoing and talkative; he joins in with family outings and goes places with his friends (before, he wanted to stay home alone in his room). There have been no fits of rage, no more declarations that he hates himself, no more calling himself a loser (I couldn't believe he would call himself a loser--he carries a 3.9 GPA in an academically-challenging private school and was recently accepted to Case Western University), and he is sleeping better. He is just simply BETTER.

If you or your child can take this medication with no side effects, that's wonderful. Please continue to do so. But please remember: millions of people take Singulair. If only 10% develop the serious side effects, that's **hundreds of thousands** of people.

I like to live my life with facts, not speculation and drama. My child is on Singulair and doing fantastic. I remember the trips to the ER when I did not know if my child would live or die. Of course when I saw this report, it caused me some concern so I did some research on my own. Did you know that suicide is the leading cause of violent death in New York State, the United States and the world? In 2002 in New York State there were 1,292 suicides which exceeded homicides by 32%. The statistics show that 1 in 10 teenagers plans to commit suicide. The National Center for Health reports a 10% suicide rate in kids 15-24 years of age and 4 male suicides for every female suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among those 15-24 years old.

So now we have 1 child in New York that has committed suicide that just happened to be on Singulair, and it is Singulairs fault? Show me the proof. All I see is one distraught mom who is trying to find blame for her son’s tragic death. Is there only half the story being told, a trend I have noticed in journalism these days. Let’s face it, life happens. I am NOT on Singulair and I have had melt downs, thrown things across the room, been depressed over things, cried, and even for the past week have been having some crazy dreams. I remember as a child putting notes on my room door telling my parents how much I hated them. I remember as a teenager thinking my life would be better if I were dead. I remember my child being cranky and fussy before she was on Singulair, gee maybe she was teething. The term “terrible twos” has been around a lot longer that Singulair. Let’s face it, we have turned into a society of people who always want something to blame. I think it is time people start taking responsibility for themselves and accept the fact that sometimes life just happens. Take accountability for your own lives, and stop trying to blame everything and anything.

I also live my life by reading internet blogs with a grain of salt. These blogs are public forums and places where anyone and everyone can post. How do you know that all these posts are real? Remember the day when kids made prank phone calls for fun? Now they have the internet and can post pranks on these blogs. How do you know that a competitor to Singulair is not posting in order to fuel the feeding frenzy? How about a registered sex offender or a felon in prison? There are a lot of “sick” people in the world and yes, they have access to the internet too. If you are hanging on every single one of these posts as being true and real then I feel sorry for you. The internet provides anonymity and it is easy to create a fictitious identity and a fictitious story. That is probably why if you do a search for “internet safety” you get 15,700,000 hits.

Until I see proof, I am not going to take my child off Singulair. The CDC reports that in 2002 there were 1.9 million visits to the ER for asthma and 4,261 asthma deaths. If I did stop my child’s Singulair, and she died in the ER from as asthma attack, whose head does that fall on? The media?

I see posts from people saying that they are not experiencing any negative side effects. That's wonderful--if you or your child can take this medication without any problems, go for it. Yes, the boards for other drugs do list extreme reactions, but if you look around, you won't find many with as many postings as this Singulair board has. I was shocked by how many postings there are here. And yes, this board had over 1000 posts even before the news story broke yesterday. I came here back in late February concerned only about my son's insomnia; only after reading the other posts did I realize that many of the other things I had been concerned (depression, fits of rage, exhaustion) could be linked to this drug.

If it works for you or your child, wonderful. Many people probably won't be affected at all by these negative side effects. But there are millions of people on Singulair. If only 10% have the serious side effects, that would be **hundreds of thousands of people**.

No side effects here - my 5 year old has been on Singulair since he was 2 1/2 and has showed no strange symptoms outside of those of a normal 5 year old boy. He has asthma and severe allergies - including a nut/peanut allergy. He also takes Zyrtec in the Spring and Summer seasons (heavy allergy time for him). Gets good grades in Kindergarten and has never had emotional/behavioral issues at school or at home. I am shocked to hear that people are having these extreme reactions! Although, it seems that there are always going to be reactions to ANY drug out there - go to any of the boards on any drug and you will find people with extreme reactions. Singulair has saved my sons lungs, and possibly his life.

My granddaughter has been on this for 2 years and we are devastated. We took her to a counselor 2 months after she was put on this drug for for allergies. Her behavior was bizarre. The counselor attributed her mood swings and behavior to moving to the country and attending a new school but never to Singulair. After we just saw this news story it was like the sky opened up. My beautiful 11-year old granddaughter has been affected by this chemical and we did not know it. I am currently getting all of her medical and psychological records together and taking her off this medication. We will seek natural, organic solutions and never again accept what these pharmaceutical companies routinely tell the doctors. We did not know that Singulair even had these side effects, the doctor never told us. She has exhibited anxiety, mood swings, depression and abnormal behavior. She NEVER had had problems like this before this chemical. It took us 2 years to find this our? Our whole family is so angry about this and of course feel terribly guilty that we didn't see the connection. However, the pharmaceutical companies bear a great deal of responsibility, they market this to doctors and the public as harmless wonder drugs. I can only pray that getting her off this will restore her to a normal childhood. Can they ever give back the 2 years she lost?

My fifteen year old son—all star athlete, good student, always following the rules has been through hell and back with this too, and is still feeling the stigma. After being on Singulair about 6 months, he started hearing and seeing things. He woke the whole house up one night with a blood-curdling scream. We immediately sought help and i started investigating the side-effects of Singulair. Every doctor we spoke too, Primary care, Allergy specialist, and 2 psychiatrists, discounted my theory that the Singulair might be causing all this. He did express having depressed emotions and thoughts of suicide. This kid had no previous pre-existing conditions that would account for these symptoms. Thank god the Psychs ruled out schizophrenia, which was what we were all afraid of, including my very intuitive son. I NOW FEEL LIKE I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. This is so wrong. I tried to speak up about it and was swept under the rug many times. Please tell me if there are lucrative organizations i can report this too. My kids has been emotionally injured from this drug and it seems there are many more that have actually years from their childhood.

I took Lamisil in 1999 with no problem, but then, about 6 years ago I was taking Lamisil again and had some heart issues. I was taking a multivitamin at the same time as I was taking the Lamisil. I started having severe PVC's after a few days and actually went to a heart specialist because I didn't know what was wrong. I quit taking the Lamisil immediately because I thought there may be a correlation. After about a week the PVC's stopped, but I never did start back on the Lamisil. It just so happened that a couple of months later I saw a news story that anti fungal medications can cause heart problems if taken in conjunction with vitamins. I am convinced there was a connection.

In 2001 my daughter started Singular for about 3 years to treat what the doctors said was childhood asthma. After being on the medication for a few months she started having nightmares and was terrified about going to sleep. Unfortunately, I did not relate this to the medication. We did extensive research on the Singular before starting her on the med.. No- where did we find anxiety, nightmares, or impulsiveness as a side effect. Two years into the med we brought my daughter to see a psychologist because of the nightmares, who diagnosed her with anxiety and impulsiveness. We didn't medicate her for either; however, we did use behavior modification. Although the behavior modification helped slightly with the impulsiveness, it did not do anything for the fear she endured when it became nighttime. She would not go to sleep in fear of the nightmares until pure exhaustion hit. After being on the med for 3 years it stopped working so we took her off. A few weeks after being off a friend asked if my daughter was still on Singular because the FDA just came out with information about it causing vivid dreams that could cause anxiety that Merck seemed to have held back as a side effect. A few months of being off the med and the nightmares went away. Unfortunately, she was on the med for so long and because she was so young I don't know if this caused any long term effects such as the anxiety and impulsiveness that has now became part of her personality. Being 3 years old and taking it for 3 years how can that not make an impact on a child's personality. They are learning things at that age about themselves and the way they rationalize things. Fortunately, she is extremely intelligent and hopefully as she grows older she will mature enough to deal with the anxiety and impulses.

I'm in the same boat with so many of you parents. After MY parents sent me a link to the news story, I broke down in tears. My 8 1/2 yo daughter has been taking Singulair (5mg) daily for 5 years.

She is the oldest of 3 and has some emotional issues we've always attributed to her personality: mood swings, rage that will last anywhere from 2 minutes to an hour, over-emotional, and yes, even at age 5 she said she wished she was dead. We were shocked, wondering where in the world that idea had come from. I can't say it was caused by Singulair, but it very well could be a factor. Our other two children just don't have the same issues she has with emotions. As a side note, over the years (and just yesterday as a matter of fact, she has complained of severe leg pain. Again, I never thought that would be a side effect of this medication.)

Lately, her allergy/asthma doc has been prescribing more and more meds for her and we have chosen to not give them to her. We will certainly remove Singulair from her regimen. As a parent, who can we trust? My child can't breathe if she's not on some sort of medication.

I would like to know, as another parent asked, if these side affects will subside once Singulair is discontinued.

I must say that Singulair works to control her allergy-induced asthma, but after seeing the story, reading comments here, and seeing my own daughter's behavior, I don't believe it's worth the risk. She's off this medication as of today!

I'm praying for each of you and your kids!

I have chosen to take our son off singulair his behavior has turned around for the better already. I am married to a Pulmonary adult doctor and all his training was to put our son on this medicine .Our son is four almost five in July he was a premature baby bore at 26 weeks do October 4th so he has under developed lungs. I cant express how much singulair has give us so much pain and joy it was bitter sweet with this medicine he had no asthma from a cold . However the headaches , night sweats,aggressive behavior, mood swings were out of control it was like giving him the medicine to breathe right was just killing him. I wish this was not the case however it is I read the news story on the suicide and I fear that it could definitely have been a product of this medicine I am so sorry for everyone who has a child with asthma. Good luck on everyones decision to not take this medicine anymore its a very hard choice but you all no in your heart it's an easy one. NO MORE SINGULAIR.

My daughter is three and a half. She has been a Singulair since she was 18 months old. She has also been on oral pred, xopenex, pulmicort for her asthma. Last fall, her pediatrician (the same doc who put her on Singulair) diagnosed her as hyperactive and probably attention deficit. She is often difficult to manage. Her pre-school teacher has complained that she is disruptive in class. She speaks at a shout, is demanding and interrupts people constantly. She has been gaining weight -- and I'm worried that even though she is 3 1/2 she is wearing a size 5. She has also developed the hard-blink tic. Her pediatrician has recommended she see a neurologist for the tic. Thanks heavens a neighbor saw a news story on the side effects of singulair and told me about them. I am taking her off the drug now.

I just took my daughter to the doctor for her 8 year check up. As her pediatrician was looking through the chart, she noticed she takes singulair and said that 1 of her patients had just informed her about the recent news story about the suicide connection, she said to have my daughter stop taking it and she would look up some info and call me. My daughter had been diagnosed with "possible asthma" when she was 2 and I gave her singulair during allergy seasons, but when she wasn't taking it I noticed the night time coughing would happen occasionally and she would have times where she was short of breath. I believe at about 6 we started to give her singulair all the time. The coughing and shortness of breath did stop. Now that I've been informed of these side effects, (I had previously asked pharmacists & doctors several times and all assured me it was completely safe to take) I wonder if some of her attitude/moodiness could be related to this drug. Then I remembered a time a couple months ago when she was frantic about my husband leaving for the weekend...she was staying with her grandparents, whom she loves and has stayed w/ her whole life. For a week before she was absolutely hysterical, crying and saying she didn't want us to leave, she had a bad feeling she couldn't explain. We tried to understand her feelings, but could find no reasonable explanation. She came to me the day before we left and said" if you go, I'll kill myself." This bothered me coming from my 7 year old daughter, but I spoke to her about what she said, what it actually meant etc. Now months later I can only wonder, but am taking her off the drug and we'll see if anything changes.