My 17 year old daughter started Singulair last July for Asthma. S...

If you got doctors to support that your daughter was acting "under the influence" of a prescribed drug, would there be a chance of getting the scholarships back?? It is worth a try!

Many of us have filed complaints with the FDA and my heart goes out to you.We were devastated that we didn't connect the dots when our beautiful 9 year old granddaughter started exhibiting self destructive and bizarre behavior 2 years ago right after being put on this medication. She went through councsling, it was awful. Finally, this past march 28 the story broke in the media and we made the connection. No one, not the allergist, the pediatrician, no one told us about these side effects that had already been known a year earlier but were not made public. Dr. Sarah Sellers at the FDA is investigating please email her with your story.

You are not alone ,we are all speaking out trying to be heard,i read a great blog about a 21 yr old girl who after 2 yrs on singulair had lost everything,schilarships, job and eventually credit rating,she called her blog Life Interrupted.What has happened to these kids is criminal,we need to prove they knew and decided the kids were worth sacrificing for a few dollars

Sounds like my 16 year old. She took singulair for almost 5 years. She has been off singulair for 2 months and is about 80% back. I have several post about her. Your daughter was on for just a short time so should return to you 100%. Please ask her doctors to help you get her scholarships back.

I am not an expert so take everything that I post with a grain of salt. I do my best to check many sources before I post anything but nobody seems to know much about Singulair side effects.

In my opinion, you have an excellent reason to do everything you can to try to prove what was the cause of your daughter's freshman year problems. I am sure that the support group here all believes that Singulair could very well be the reason. I have been researching my theory that montelukast breaks down and is transformed by some people's metabolism into quinolinic acid, a very potent neuro-toxin. It only takes a very minute amount to cause some pretty profound neurological and psychiatric symptoms. You are a nurse. If you have any way to pursue the chemical cause of your daughter's symptoms, we would all be very interested in what you can find out.

Smoking gun for Alzheimer's disease: Quinolinic acid
In a world first, Australian researchers have found a toxin that plays an important role in the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia.

The research is significant because drugs that are in the advanced developmental phase for other conditions might be able to be used on Alzheimer's patients, to halt the disease progressing. At present, there are only minimally effective treatments for the condition, which is increasing with the ageing population.

"We found that all of the brains of dementia patients showed quinolinic acid neurotoxicity," said Professor Bruce Brew, Director of Neurology at St Vincent's Hospital and Professor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). "This acid kills nerve cells in the brain, leading to brain dysfunction and ultimately death."

There are currently more than 200, 000 people with Alzheimer's disease in Australia. The number will exceed 730, 000 by 2050.

"Quinolinic acid is part of a biochemical pathway called the kynurenine pathway," said the lead author of the research, UNSW's Dr Gilles Guillemin, who is based at the Centre for Immunology at St Vincent's Hospital. "The activation of that pathway is also found in other major brain diseases including Huntington's disease, stroke, dementia and schizophrenia."

The paper Indoleamine 2, 3 dioxygenase and quinolinic acid Immunoreactivity in Alzheimer's disease hippocampus has been published this week in the leading international journal Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology. It is the result of collaboration between researchers from St Vincent's Hospital, UNSW, the University of Sydney and Hokkaido University, Japan.

"There are several drugs which can block this pathway, which are already under investigation by our laboratory and others," said Dr Guillemin.

The drugs, which would need to be tested for efficacy, could be used to complement other treatments.

"Quinolinic acid may not be the cause of Alzheimer's disease, but it plays a key role in its progression," said Alzheimer's researcher, Dr Karen Cullen from the University of Sydney. "It's the smoking gun, if you like.

"While we won't be able to prevent people from getting Alzheimer's disease, we may eventually, with the use of drugs, be able to slow down the progression."

The other researchers are Claire Noonan from Sydney University and Osamu Takikawa from Hokkaido University, Japan.