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Bactrim is making my child to aggressive


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If she still has clostridia/c. diff. infection in her gut, this could be the cause of the aggression, not the Bactrim.

Clostridia/c. diff. is a nasty infection, that often presents as aggression.

 

Are you giving her ample, high quality probiotics, in addition to saccharomyces boulardii (Sac. B.) probiotic?

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You could buy some Custom Probiotics (powder) and start by hiding a little in a strong flavored drink, or a touch of ice cream. Does she swallow capsules? She must, right? You could buy some probiotics capsules, even just Culterelle, which you can buy at Target, and give it to her as one of her 'pills.' At least 2 hours away from antibiotic.

Perhaps what you are seeing when you give her probiotics is 'die off' of yeast and gut bacteria.

I'd say with her history of clostridia, you have to get some probiotics in her, otherwise it may just keep coming back, and never go away, with being on antibiotics. And gut infections bring out terrible behavior in a child, in my experience.

The probiotics also help regulate bowel movements.

Hang in there-

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Wilma, we also struggle with probiotics. I swear they make him worse. We have tried different kinds and avoid ones with s.thermophilus. He was doing okay on the one we are on now - Ultamite Flora Critical Care. We added Bactrim this week to the amoxicillin he's already on. So far he's really really agitated. Not aggressive so much, but I feel like that's not far behind when he gets this worked up. We had some really amazing days last week. Now with adding the bactrim they are gone. But I'm feeling hopeful that if we can stick this out the bactrim may actually be helping. He was initially a lot worse on the high dose amoxicillin, but after sticking it out for 6 weeks we had those amazing days. So we're going to hang in for as long as we can and see what happens. What does your doc think about the bactrim causing the aggression? Can you reduce the dose and go more slowly?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Wilma,

 

How is your DD doing? DS8 got up to a full dose of bactrim last week and he got really agitated and aggressive. He also started getting stinging sensations and then his feet hurt so badly he couldn't walk. So we also had to back down and stop the bactrim. We're going to add it in more slowly, every other day only for a bit and see what happens. Just wondering how it's working out for your DD? Haven't seen you on here in a few days. I hope everything is okay!

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Abnormal mood changes are a reported side effect of Bactrim in children.

 

Here's a question I've asked our doc and I still don't think I understand the answer: How do you know the difference between a herx, a bad reaction to a medication, or just a regular symptom?

 

DS8's had agitation and aggression as main symptoms all along, so I have no idea where to place that. It has been mostly gone the last few weeks before adding bactrim, then came back gradually while we weaned up bactrim, and once we got up to full dose of bactrim it was terrible! It could be a reaction to the medication. IDK!! The stinging sensations are new, so I guess that's a herx? The sore feet are new too, but he's had severe pains in his ankles, knees and hips that have prevented him from walking before. Feet is just a new place for an old complaint. So confusing! All these complaints stopped within 24 hours of stopping the bactrim. ??? Overall he's improved by leaps and bounds, so I still think we're on the right track, just trying to understand it all and figure out how to move forward without paying for an appointment every single time I have a question. Would love any thoughts/advice!

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momcap-

 

I have NO idea. We are not treating for lyme (tried it, didn't help one way or the other, following a strict but aggressive pandas protocol).

 

BUT- I saw this post, and wondered as I do with many of the posts on meds/herxes. Abnormal mood changes (and it listed irritibility) is considered a side effect by the FDA for Bactrim.

 

I know, how difficult it has been at time to determine WHAT my kids are reacting to; med change, supplement added, illness exposure, loose teeth, stress, and on and on. Many times I link it to something, but is that because I am looking at it through our past experience? through what I want it to be?

 

In our house, pandas is an ever moving target. Sometimes they are 100%, most of the time they are 90-95%, and sometimes we dip down to 50 to 85%. It is SO hard to isolate what exactly meds are doing in this situation.

 

This summer, we removed EVERYTHING (except vitamin D, and light probiotics). We had NO change. They were at 95% before and during this "experiment:. I was happy to see, that the supplements we had tried, and the daily antibiotics we were using actually were not doing anything, and NOT needed.

 

But it did drive home how hard it is to tell WHAT is working.....

 

I don't think there is an easy answer.

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I hear you! I never know what is helping and what is hurting. I feel like we are doing so many things that I will never know what is what. But 2 things I do know for sure. One is that DS8 has made huge progress since tonsillectomy and starting lyme treatment. Again, not sure what to attribute that to since we did both at the same time. Probably both? And the other thing I know for sure is that if we stop antibiotics he will end up hospitilized. He was on prophylactic dose amoxicillin most of last year for PANDAS, and twice we tried to stop. Both times within 24 hours (!!!) he was a raging monster.

 

You were successfully able to remove everything this summer?! How wonderful! Are your kids still off everything? Or did you have to go back to antibiotics with strep season returning? I look forward to the day that my son has healed enough to start weaning him off some (all?) of these things. Right now between meds and supplements he's taking 30 pills a day!

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During the summer they took vitamin D (one gummy vit) and one probiotic per day.

 

Now that they are back to school, I have added zithromax twice per week (true prophylactic dose). Basically because I am a chicken, and want some type of insurance policy :)

 

They had been on continuous daily antibiotics for almost two years. We tried the lyme protocol for a couple months, and they ended up getting strep while on multiple antibiotics (first time for strep in over two years). This really made me question what we were doing. So, once they became relatively stable we took them off everything, to try to figure out what the heck we were doing! Nothing changed. If anything, they continued to improve over the summer, and did really well with ERP in working to get rid of some residual issues.

 

With school back, I did opt to do the antibiotics again. At this point I am glad, because for the last two weeks, I have had pneumonia, so I feel like we have some protection. I really think, for my kids- they could probably do without any antibiotics, and just need a quick, aggressive response to any uptick in pandas symptoms. Maybe next year we will try no antibiotics?

 

I am sure you will get to the day where you don't need antibiotics. Summer is a good time to test it out. For now, as I am sure you are, enjoy the improvements!!!!

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