My son could have PANDAS? Help!

[Kayanne]

I'm really sorry that you are having such a hard time right now!

 

It doesn't hurt to look at every angle, especially PANDAS which is so often overlooked.

 

We took our PANDAS daughter to a pediatric rhuematologist in August, and while he wasn't helpful about PANDAS, he seemed knowledgable about TS because his son has it. He said that typically, children with TS also see increases of tics and ocd from illnesses (this is one of the reasons that many drs don't believe in PANDAS).

 

I just want to give another angle on this....could it be that he has TS (because the medications seemed to have it under control), and the sickness brought out a tic, and then the medications that were given to treat the cough made the ticcing worse?

 

I did a quick search on google, and it didn't reveal anything about inhalers making TS worse, but sometimes parents' anecdotal experience will tell you a lot. Perhaps you could also post on the TS board, and see if you get any responses?

 

Has your son been treated with prednisone for his asthma? Prednisone is one of those medications that many people have found to make their TS worse.

 

Best of luck, I really hope your son gets better!

 

~Karen

 

Hi! Where do I begin? My son was diagnosed at age 7 with tourette's - he is now 9. He also has ADHD and Anxiety. We started medicating the tics and anxiety in May 2009 and my son has been extremely stable and we rarely see tics. In October he got sick with a bad cough and fever for a couple of days and he has continued to cough for 8 weeks now. The pediatrician thinks maybe asthma causing the coughing but he never wheezes and has no trouble breathing ever. We have tried a couple of inhalers (albuterol and xoponex) over past few weeks and that was a NIGHTMARE beyond belief. It made his tics and anxiety go crazy and he was having panic attacks. I do think that the majority of the coughing going on now is a habit or a tic and not really related to asthma. It is so hard to figure this all out. I saw the news story about the girl with PANDA who sneezes nonstop and wondered if that could be what happened with my son. Maybe he had strep in October and we didn't know and that triggered the onset of way worse tics and this nonstop coughing????? He has tended to be the kid over the years who gets strep but never has a sore throat so perhaps he had strep in Oct and we missed it? Today we saw the psychiatrist and she increased the dosage of Tenex for the tics so we'll see if this improves things.

 

Any suggestions on how to determine if this is PANDAS? I don't know if to bring this up Fri (we have an asthma treatment follow up) with his pediatrician. We live in a small town in AZ and I have a feeling she probably knows nothing about this.

 

Is it possible that his tourette's could be caused by PANDAS? Although he was diagnosed at age 7, we can look back to age 3 and see that he had tics throughout the years and they just weren't frequent enough to know it was anything more than bad habits at the time.

 

I would love any advice or direction!

 

THank you so very much.

Dakri