YES- Miralax may cause tics says Mayo Surgeon

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I just brought my 3 year old son home from Mayo clinic. As I have posted in the past, he was on Miralax since he was 4 months old. He developed incoordination, speech issues, and tics - eye blinking, shoulder shrugs namely. I took him off Miralax 4 months ago and the tics lessened - especially when given Magnesium. Then he developed severe constipation which I thought was under control. When it became a month of diarhea, as a result of the blockage( unknown to me at the time) I stopped intervening and gave him bananas and rice. We started Miralax again 5 days ago and the eye blinking tics are back and more frequent. He even did it for the anesthesiologist who said he was going to look that up - miralax and tics...I told him that it is mostly parents reporting it and not stated as a side effect officially.

The surgeon spent 2 hours under anesthesia cleaning out my sons rectum....they did not even get to his colon as his rectum was that bad!

I shamefully told the surgeon that I had taken him off the Miralax 4 months ago and was doing all sorts of natural things to help him. I told him that I believed the Miralax caused the eye blinking tics. The surgeon said, "Yes, I believe you. Nothing is free. Every drug has side effects. It may cause the eye blinking, but it is much more important not to be constipated as it will ruin his colon if cronically constipated."

It does feel good to be validated that these side effects do occur and everyone needs to assess the risk for themselves.

Pam

From: selene_bowlby <resources@idesignst udios.com>Subject: Miralax Causing Tics in 3 Year Old?To: miralax@yahoogroups .comDate: Monday, February 2, 2009, 6:00 PM

Hi,I'm new to this group, in hopes of searching for information to help my3yo daughter. I'm scouring through the archives, but wanted to post mystory in hopes of suggestions. .. I'll try to make this short (I have afeeling it will be long, though!)4 weeks ago, we took DD to the pediatrician for a fever where we alsodiscussed her constipation. The ped suggested 1/2 the adult dosage ofMiralax. After 2 weeks she also had a hard fall to the back of her headon the tile floor. The next day we noticed that she developed a twitch -she would shake one or both hands, one or both legs, her head or herbody - after about a week she developed a verbal tic as well like a"Guah" sound accompanying about half of the tics. She is otherwisecompletely normal - her usual playful self, as active and talkative asany 3 year old would be... she just has this tic now.Anyway, the night we noticed the tics we

took her to the ER where theydid a CT scan and found no swelling or bleeding. Pupils were fine, heractions after the fall (from her own height) didn't sound like there wasa concussion, etc. The ER doctor said the tics were likely NOT relatedto the fall??? and should go away within 2-3 days.We followed up with the pediatrician a few days later who looked at theCT results, as well as a video of DD with the tics (which are mostfrequent when she is concentrating hard - such as eating, coloring,etc.) On the video I ask questions like, "Are you doing it on purpose,or does it just happen?" "Are you shaking your hand or does it justshake?" "Does it hurt?" - to which her responses were "Just happens"(she replied "happens" along with the next two twitches), it just"shakes" and "No" it doesn't hurt.They pediatrician has a nurse on staff who specializes in pediatricneurology - both said the tics were

likely a result of the head traumaand should clear up in 2-3 weeks, but referred us to a pediatricneurologist to be certain. At this point, we also followed up on theconstipation, and he said we could reduce the amount once she becameregular. I'm sure we all know that BM's on Miralax are not pleasant, sowe decided to reduce her dosage to 1/4 the adult dosage around thistime, even though she's still not quite regular yet.We went to the pediatric neurologist who said the tics were NOT relatedto the fall (insanely confusing to us, because they started the dayafter the fall!) He said she probably would have developed a tic laterin life, and the timing is a coincidence. That she would likely havethis tic at least until adolescence, or it might be permanent.He mentioned tics can occur as a side effect of decongestants - she hadtaken 1 dose of Mucinex around the time of the fall, but he didn't

thinkthat was a sufficient amount. We told him about the Miralax, but hisresponse was essentially "No way" that there was no way Miralax wouldhave any effect on the tics.DD is scheduled for a sleep deprived EEG this week, and a sedated MRInext week to look into things further. I have to be 100% honest that thesedation completely scares me! She's only 3yo and sedation runs it'srisks! We rather not do the sedated MRI if we can avoid it - which mightdepend on the outcome of the possibility of Miralax causing these tics?Forward to this last weekend - over the past week DD's tics had startedto reduce in frequency. After a few days, though they have begun toincrease in frequency again. Then "Mommy's Intuition" kicked in and Ithought about the Miralax which has always been in the back of myhead... I took another look at the bottle and noticed it says not totake for more than 7 days! Well, my child

has been on it for FOUR weeksnow!I decided to do a Google search for "Miralax tics child" and wouldn'tyou know, I find tons of results, in particular this post on the Dana'sView web site - http://www..danasvie w.net/miralax. htm - as well as thismessage group. You can imagine my shock!So at this point, maybe we are grasping at straws, but could the Miralaxbe causing my baby's tics??? Have we essentially been poisinging her forFOUR whole weeks? My thoughts at this point are that the tics grewstrongest after the first 2 weeks of use - and started improving once wereduced the dosage to 1/4 the adult dose... and then started increasingagain as they've begun to build back into her system? Are we off basehere, or does this seem all too possible?We've stopped the Miralax now (today is the 2nd full day without it).She

still has the tics but I notice she's hardly done the verbal tictoday (the physical tics/twitches are still as frequent as they've beenthe past few days - which is still improvement over when we firstrealized she had developed the twitching).We pray that stopping Miralax will make the tics completely go away andthere will be no lasting effects. But of course, we worry that there ispermanent damage? God forbid she has a permaent tic now because of this?I've called the pediatrician' s office today to speak with a Nurse - herintial reaction was she's never heard of such a side-effect, but she'dcheck with the ped. She called back that the ped hasn't heard of thiseither, but we should stop the Miralax and see what happens... I alsofaxed them copies of the google search results, and the article listedabove. No word on this yet other than it was "received" and is on the"doctor's desk"...I'd

love to hear any feedback on our situation - based on what you'veexperienced yourself, or have read on this group, etc - do you thinkthere will be permanent damage? Is there a chance the tics will go awayand our baby will get back to "normal" (aka no more tics)?Thanks in advance for reading this insanely long email! Obviously we arevery concerned - it has been a rough couple of weeks, and will continueto be so until we figure out what's going on!Thanks,Selene