Neurontin Reaction.....anyone heard of this???

[Tatamom]

My 8yo has been on Neurontin for 1 year at 300mg/day for RLS/PLMD.

A few weeks ago the neuro increased the neurontin to 900mg/day. I started out giving her 600mg/day to see how she would do. She was like an 8yo w/PMS but not too bad.

Last saturday I gave her all 3 doses (900mg total). 1 1/2 hrs after giving her the 3rd dose she became halucinating and dilusional. She thought she was being chased by giant lima beans as well as a lot of other things. I called her neuro and he had never heard of a child having that severe reaction to an increased dose of Neurontin, especially since she had tolerated the 300mg dose for a year with no problems.

I ended up taking her to the ER, by which time she had become calm. The ER doc at a children't hospital had never heard of a reaction this bad to Neurontin. They are questioning if it was the Neurontin or something else causing the reaction.

She had no other med changes. She had a clean Tox screen. She has never done this before. She has reacted badly to Klonopin but not this bad.

Anyone heard of anything this bad in a previously tolerated medication?

TIA

T-mom

[SquirmingSusan]

Tatamom, so sorry you and your daughter had to go through that. It's so scary when kids hallucinate. I had that happen with both of my kids once. They both came down with a virus and had fevers. When I gave them Tylenol they started to hallucinate and go into convulsions. My daughter had dinosaurs chasing her, and my son had bees. They were inconsolable. When I called the ER they told me to not give them anymore Tylenol and that they had seen other kids who had been reacting similarly. They were fine after a day or two, and neither one has had a hallucination or convulsions since.

So scary, though. I'm sure your daughter will be fine. And yes, the neuro is right - it's best for anyone to take is slowly with any medication. You're really in uncharted waters here.

I wish you the best. Please keep us posted.

[FidgetBoy]

Tmom-- I've never seen hallucinations before with neurontin but when I googled neurontin and hallucinations there WERE reports of this happening in a number of patients. Any drug that has an effect on neurontransmitters has the potential to cause transient psychosis. In this case, it sounds like your daughter's hallucinations directly correlated with the dosage increase.

I have found that children can have very profound side-effects that can be much different than adults. Basically, when this happens we tend to disregard the package-insert and focus on what is reality: Your daughter can't tolerate that high of a dose of neurontin.

I hope she's feeling better!

[tazzer]

if it causes nightmares and really realistic dreams...why can't at a high dosage in a child cause a hallucination? plenty of people on here talk about the weird dreams neurontin gives them.

dee

[Neco]

A big problem with pharmaceuticals is that it isn't really considered legal/ethical to conduct new medication studies in children.. Even children's cough syrup has never really been tested on children. Doses are usually just extrapolated from adult doses..

It's no wonder people go thru so many drugs trying to find the right one for their kids.