As a pediatrician I write for singulair every day. The medicati...

tothemax (notice I omitted doctor)
Please read these forums and fully understand what is really happening with Singulair! My son was 5 when they put him on it, and 4 months later he started threatening to kill himself, his siblings and myself. He kept saying he "hated this feeling inside him and didn't want to be on this earth anymore". Like the rest of the "western science" world, our pediatrician told us to get him psychologically evaluated, they were thinking ADHD or Autism. Luckily my husband found this site a month ago and we took him off it immediately. Within 2 weeks, our son was back to normal. He didn't have that blank stare in his eyes, he could focus on the task at hand, stopped the self loathing behavior, and for once wanted to enjoy his life again. FIVE YEARS OLD!!! A child at five does not even know what that means, to kill himself. tothemax, go back and read through all these posts since 2004, don't tell me it's allergies that cause behavioral problems/suicide or that the parents/society reactions to the child are making them this way, complete bs. Do you have any children of your own? Would you keep them on Singulair, have them threaten to kill themself and then put them on Ritalin or some other mood enhancing drug without looking at a possible connection? If so, I'm damn glad my children don't go to you, no repsect for our children.
Expect to be completely stoned here because there are a lot of really pissed off parents who are doing our part to keep our children healthy and not fall into the depths of hell with all the "easy fixes" doctors want to give our children. Stop practicing medicine and start being a human with feelings, and I guarantee you, you will be a better doctor for that.

Go ahead and write your prescriptions. I work in the health field and typically see 4-5 drug reps come in to see the medical staff with lots of goodies every day. Singulair caused damaging side effects in my granddaughter. I feel the pediatrician is complicit in this with the pharmaceutical companies because this drug and others have not been properly tested and studied in children over a long period of time. The pharm companies don't care about these side effects, they just reap the profits. Yes, there are many life saving drugs, unfortunately this does not excuse the corporations from the ones they market without proper long term studies or enough knowledge of how the brain works(which experts admit that they still don't know). Also, in another matter we see children as young as 5 on ritalin and other dangerous drugs. The pediatricians prescribe this junk to poor innocent children without knowing the environmental factors causing the loss of concentration and hyperactivity in the first place. But we do know and see the home life of these little ones, it is filled with emotional abandonment, parental substance abuse, physical neglect, poor diet, etc. But the doctors don't care they just prescribe the pills. In Dante's Inferno there was a circle of hell for religious leaders like popes and bishops who were supposed to help people and do good but who turned their power into evil and I'm afraid doctors are using their skills to do so much harm in turning American children into a generation of pill poppers, in fact it is at epidemic proportions.

I am a doctor who has a son with many of these side effects (My medical assistant son is on Singulair and has the same problems). Your argument that it is the Asthma or Allergies causing these symptoms is NOT based on the facts. If you read all these posts as I have, you will see that most of these parents say that the allergies and asthma responded very well to Singulair. The longest study of Singulair in kids is about 1 year according to the prescribing information. And only 63 kids were studied greater than one year. Now, millions of kids are on it for many years. The only way we will find out more information is if we listen to our patients since there are no long term studies. We need more long term studies before new medications are approved.
I have been practicing for 14 years and at least 10 medications have been taken off the market during my career.
Have an open mind and remember that Merck swore Vioxx was safe until it was revealed in long term studies that it was not safe and when their original studies were objectively reviewed, the problem was uncovered. They also tried to hide a neutral study about Zetia for 2 years before they released the data. Our responsibility is our patients and theirs is to their stockholders.

jc

Right on JC! If only I could find a Dr. with your views. I feel like I'm fighting an uphill battle and I'm the only one who truly has my children's best interests at heart. As parents, I've learned we need to educate ourselves and not rely on others (even our medical professionals) to know what's always best. We are the experts on our kids!

When my son started falling asleep at school and in other inappropriate places, we took him to his physician who recommended a sleep study. My son was diagnosed with sleep hypopnea (similar to apnea, where his breathing is disturbed about 27 times an hour). My son was given Singulair as an option over a more in-depth sleep study, and he chose to try it first. Thankfully, Singulair shrank his adenoids and his sinus/nasal tissues enough that his sleep is now undisturbed -- well, unless he forgets to take it or has a cold. So, because Singulair worked for my son, he avoided going through a process that was terrifying to him. (He was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, which has been likened to high-functioning autism, when he was 5 and his ADHD was diagnosed at the same time. He was diagnosed with sleep hypopnea when he was 10. So he's been on Singulair for 3 years with no problems.) What I'm getting at is: my son responds well to the Singulair and we're just thankful something worked to improve his sleep. My mother told me about the suicide link, and I came to this site for more information. I always watch my son's emotions, since he has such high anxiety, and not much has changed in his character. But this site is a wealth of experience of other parents and patients, mostly negative, just because it's a lot easier to complain sometimes. I mean, if something isn't wrong, why fix it?

I am bipolar, and was diagnosed a few years ago. I am on meds and have other health problems that leave me with chronic fatigue (curiosity seekers can Google Fibromyalgia to learn more about that). I happened to notice that, if I played with my kids outdoors or went for a walk along a nature trail near our home, that I would feel like I had a cold and I my energy would drop to absolutely nothing and that would leave me bedridden for over a week. My doctor talked with me about that in particular, because I'm supposed to be trying to be as active as possible. But the excessive fatigue made doing anything seem impossible. My mother suggested I wear a mask outdoors which would prevent me from breathing in pollen and mold outside. I did, and, in fact, figured out that I didn't feel exhausted after my walks if I wore a mask. I actually felt invigorated for the first time in years. I talked to my doctor about it and he told me that it is possible that my allergies were causing the problem and recommended I wear a mask outside. I'm on tons of meds: three for my bipolar, two for allergies, and multivitamins. I know he didn't want to overwhelm me with medications, since any side effect you can imagine for a medication would just rear its ugly head and force me to try another medication until I would finally just give up and not let my doctor treat me with pills. I got bronchitis for the first time just two months ago. Six weeks later, I got pneumonia. My lungs still aren't very clear, but my doctor wants to allow my body to try to finish healing itself (I've been on three different antibiotic therapies over these two months). But it couldn't begin to heal itself with my allergies taking up all the "healing energy" my body could produce. So, he told me to use Flonase (which he subsequently changed to Rhinocort -- I don't understand making a flower-scented nose spray for an allergy sufferer; that's just wrong.) and Singulair. I got sick again last week because I was unable to buy the Singulair. My insurance company thinks any person who gets Singulair should try pills and a cortisone nose spray for 21 days first. No big deal, normally, but the medical records which show I've already done that are over 7 years old. Long gone down the shredder. So I told my doctor when I went in sick again that my insurance wouldn't cover Singulair yet. I now have six weeks' worth of Singulair samples and have begun taking it. I take it at bedtime, just like the Zyrtec I've been taking for over a year. I haven't noticed any of the side effects mentioned here, but that doesn't mean that it won't happen.

I wanted to thank those of you who have contributed to this site. If I do ever have something strange start happening, like my mood changing more violently or depression worse than what's normal for me, I can come here and find information so that I can talk to my doctor about getting off of Singulair. I truly hope that never happens, since nothing else on the market has ever helped me much. I'm also going to link my family to this site. We have horrible allergies, and I wouldn't be surprised if more of us are on Singulair.

I'm sorry for those of you who have had such a horrible experience with Singulair. It's frustrating I know. I am thankful for the efforts you have made to make sure people are aware that Singulair has the potential to cause debilitating side effects and suicide. Without you, no one would know how bad Singulair has the potential to be.

I am an Allergist and I have been prescribing Singulair since it first came out. I have had one or two patients report mild stimulation side effects, but nobody has reported suicidal ideation, rage, or some of the other claims from other's posts. This does not mean these observations are invalid, but they should be carefully investigated in a properly designed scientific study before a drug that has saved countless Asthma patients lives, and improved the quality of life in many people with Asthma and allergies, is withdrawn or restricted unneccessarily.

I would also like to comment on Pediatrician's comments. I agree with all you said, except the comment about allergy shots causing suicide. That is sheer nonsense. It has no basis in fact in my practice, nor in the medical literature, to support such a claim. In my 30 years of specialization in the care of allergic diseases I have had nobody commit suicide who was on allergy shots. We give around 100 allergy shots a day so you would think we would have seen a case or two, but we have had none, zip, nada. In addition, I can't conceive of a mechanism by which an injection of an extract of pollens, dust or mold could cause affective disorders.

dear Doctothemax #28763
my child is 8. she has been on singulair on and off again for 5 years. she has had night terrors since she was 18 months old but she had gotten better but she started having night terrors again when she started the med again 6 months ago she also started her fluid in the ear problems agains and has trouble sleeping. she had a tonsillectomy and adnoids removed so there should be no obstructive breathing problems going on. every morning she so sleepy she is miserable and tells me she hates me,and she has ocd symptoms she calls them her worries and the worries are usually that she is scared she may have injured someone or spread her germs and made someone sick. She comes to me and tells me she is has a worry. i wonder if singulair causes people more side affects if they are already prone to emotional problems already

I apologize for the misspeaking.
Yes, singulair does cause behavioral change, but they appear within the first few pills. In my practice, I guess that one out of twenty kids developed mild or moderately sever side effects that completely disappeared since the parents were warned and were requested to stop the medication.
Yes, singulair does cause behavioral change but the ones that I have seen were all early and not months or years later.
My apology.

Your right it did happen fast,i reported my sons feelings of depression and anxiety within 2 months of the meds.He blew me off,an under my insitence we took him off the steroids, because they were nice enough to list that as a side effect, unlike singulair.I do not dispute singulair helped control his asthma,but at what price.I also believe the symptons got worse over time after 4 yrs of singulair he has diagnoses of depression, school phobia anxiety, panic attacks and as recently as a month ago ocd