Have any of you experienced joint and muscle pain as a side effect of taking Allegra?

May 14, 2012 3:55 PM

Have any of you experienced joint or muscle pain (or discomfort) when taking Allegra?

I've been dealing with some weird joint and muscle discomfort for the last five months. I've been to the doctor twice, had several tests (auto-immune, thyroid, etc) run on me, and everything seems to check out normal. My doc is perplexed, so he's sending me to a Rheumatologist (appointment's in June).

In the meantime, I've been trying to keep up with my exercise and have been investigating whether there was anything I added to my life around the time the pain started. The one thing that comes to mind is Allegra. I switched from Zyrtex to Allegra last fall.

I see that joint and muscle pain is an uncommon side effect for the drug. If Allegra is the cause, it took a little while to start manifesting itself as an issue. Just curious if anyone on here has felt similar side effects with Allegra, whether immediately or after using it for awhile.

Thanks

posted by bjork24 to Health & Fitness (3 answers total)

I've been on daily Allegra from the beginning of March. I've also switched from Zyrtec to Allegra. Zyrtec destroys my sleep patterns and I'm exhausted all day. It is possible that I'm experiencing some muscle effects from Allegra, but of course, I can't be certain that it's Allegra that's responsible. Basically, what I experience is extremely poor muscle recovery after exercise. Now my muscles are sore after exercise, seemingly constantly - I had some surgery and so had to stop exercising, and the muscle soreness persisted for 3 weeks with training. Now I'm back to exercising and muscle soreness. I guess I'll be able to test this a bit, in that I'm stopping Allegra at the end of this month (the allergy season for me is March-April-May), so I'll see if my muscles improve.

Re: the soreness. Let's say I lift weights - very light weights, because after a break, I start slow before building up to full intensity. Well, my muscles will be sore constantly - and I'll feel it in daily activities, such as lifting a mug of coffee. That never used to happen. On the other hand, I can't say positively that this is linked to Allegra - might just be coincidence.

No joint pain/discomfort though.
posted by VikingSword at 4:08 PM on May 14, 2012

Response by poster: That's interesting. My muscle discomfort is similar; need very little erertion to feel sore, and putting pressure on a main muscle will make it start to ache. None of this used to happen pre-Alegra. I'm cutting it out cold turkey tomorrow and see what happens over the week.
posted by bjork24 at 5:10 PM on May 14, 2012

I've never had muscle soreness that I can trace to Allegra, but it is listed on the side effects here.
posted by nat at 9:53 PM on May 14, 2012