Tag: asthma

Popular Asthma Drug May Cause Serious Mental Health Issues in Children and Adults, FDA Data Reveals

Singulair, a widely-prescribed asthma drug, may cause serious mental health issues, according to data revealed last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA researchers found that the drug, also sold under the generic label montelukast, attaches to multiple brain receptors critical to psychiatric functioning.

The data support the thousands of patients and dozens of studies that have reported harmful psychiatric side effects, including depression, suicide, anxiety and aggression.

Originally manufactured by Merck, the drug is prescribed for year-round indoor allergies in patients 6 months and up, seasonal outdoor allergies in patients 2 years and up, and for preventing asthma in patients 1 year and older.

Julia Marschallinger, Ph.D., a cell biologist who has studied the drug at the Institute of Molecular Regenerative Medicine in Austria, told Reuters the new data bolster patients’ reports of harm. “It’s definitely doing something that’s concerning,” she said.

The FDA researchers presented their findings — which are preliminary and have not yet been released publicly — during a Nov. 20 meeting of the American College of Toxicology in Austin, Texas.

Their lab tests showed “significant binding” of the drug to multiple brain receptors, according to Jessica Oliphant, Ph.D., a deputy director at FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research.

“These data indicate that montelukast is highest in brain regions known to be involved in (psychiatric effects),” Oliphant said. The FDA researchers’ findings confirmed prior research that showed montelukast penetrates the brains of rats.

The data do not show whether the binding mechanism leads directly to harmful effects in individual patients or which patients are particularly at risk, Reuters reported.

The FDA said it has no plans to update the drug’s label based on the new data. The FDA did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, about 4.9 million children under 18 have asthma, making it a leading chronic disease in children. Overall, nearly 28 million — or 1 in 12 — people in the U.S. have asthma.

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Biden admin met with woke group that funded fake study linking gas stoves to asthma

It has been revealed that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm met privately with the leader of the group that funded a recent study used to justify calls for bans of gas-powered stoves despite the Biden administration claiming that they weren’t seeking such a ban. 

According to an internal agency calendar obtained by the government watchdog group Americans for Public Trust, Granholm met with the CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) Jules Kortenhorst, Fox News reports.

Climate activist Kortenhorst also chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Net Zero Transition and founded the Energy Transitions Commission.

While the calendar didn’t include an agenda for the meeting, it was held over Zoom and lasted around one hour.

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‘Positive Association’ Between Vaccine-Related Aluminum Exposure and Persistent Asthma

A study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found a “positive association” between vaccine-related aluminum exposure and persistent asthma.

The study (pdf), published on Sept. 28 in the medical journal Academic Pediatrics, sought to “assess the association between cumulative aluminum exposure from vaccines before age 24 months [2 years of age]” and see whether this group of children developed asthma between ages 2 and 5.

Authors of the retrospective cohort study included current and former CDC staffers. They analyzed data from a cohort of 326,991 children who were born between 2008 and 2014 at seven medical care organizations across the United States that participate in the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a network of health groups that collaborate with the CDC in studying vaccine safety.

Results of the observational study showed that children who were vaccinated with most or all of the recommended aluminum-containing vaccines (>3.00 mg aluminum exposure) had at least a 36 percent higher risk of being diagnosed with persistent asthma than kids who got fewer vaccines (≤3.00 mg aluminum exposure).

About 6 percent of the children with eczema and 2.1 percent of the children without eczema developed persistent asthma in the study. Each additional milligram of vaccine-related aluminum exposure was associated with 1.26- and 1.19-times higher rates of persistent asthma among children with and without eczema, respectively.

Overall, there was a “positive association” between vaccine-related aluminum exposure and persistent asthma, the authors said. They did not conclude that the results suggest any causative link. “[A]dditional investigation of this hypothesis appears warranted,” they added.

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