Has anyone heard of Namenda causing aggression in a patient?

We recently made the decision to discontinue my mother's treatment with Namenda XR. Aggression is listed as one of the side affects, but Mom's weakness, dizziness, sleepiness, and stomach upset are what prompted us to to take her off of it. In her case, the benefit does not appear to outweigh the side effects. namendaxr/possible-side-effects.aspx

At the bottom of the page is a link to "Full Prescribing Information, including Patient Information". That site shows graphs comparing the progress of patients on Namenda XR to patients taking a placebo.

I hope these will be helpful to you.

I have a story about Namenda... I am a caregiver for my grandmother-in-law, and she had been declining fairly slowly into Alzheimer's, and her neurologist put her on Namenda to try and keep the decline to a minimum. Shewas able to walk and talk fairly well before he put her on it, and only needed basic help with everyday things. She became incontinent almost immediately upon starting Namenda, and after 4 doses, the fifth morning, she would not wake up. She was completely out of it, and went to the hospital. She was practically comatose for 4 days, and when she came back to, she was unable to do much. We thought that was going to be the end. The doctors suggested taking her off of all her meds, and we did. 5 days later, it was like she woke up from a bad dream, and was back with us! Nothing short of a miracle. However, since then, she has declined so quickly, and is now angry and aggressive all the time, except for breakthroughs of the nice grandma we all love. I guess I'm just saying that it's different for everyone... especially with Alzheimer's, some things work for a day or a week, then they stop doing that they're supposed to... it's like a guessing game most of the time.

My Mother was on Namenda(5mg. then 10mg.) for several years, and I do beleive it helped to prevent a rapid decline in her cognitive abilities,but over the course of her time taking it I began to realize that the times of the day that she was most angry and uncooperative with me were shortly after taking her Namenda. It took me a while to identify this because I never expected it and her Dr. never mentioned that there could be a corelation in all of our many conversations about her meanness towards specifically me as her caregiver. As I said it got progressively worse and I finally made the connection. I talked with her Dr. and he agreed that sometimes this gets worse the longer someone is on the med.We agreed to remove her from the med., since she seemed to be declining more, cognitively, and she seemed to have hit a wall with what meds could do to help. BE PREPARED, though, when you remove the Namenda, there is likely to be a rapid,irreversable, decline in her cognition. We eventually placed my Mom in a facility, her cognition is very poor,BUT, she seems much calmer and happier. Hope this helps.

I will add that we experienced this twice when the Namenda dosage was increased. Each time we decreased the dose on our own back to the lower dosage and mom seemed to do well with it. This is the third time the psych doctor insists on increasing the Namenda dosage stating Namenda should not do this. One person I met in a doctor's office told me the same thing happened to her mother when they tried her on Namenda, i.e. she became mean. They tried their mother on it two different times and both times she became mean so they chose not to give it to her. I am just wondering if the Namenda is her problem rather than the dementia. I do want to do what the doctor says but I just have concerns the medicine may be having unwanted side effects.