New research provides more evidence that some Parkinson’s drugs have rare and unusual side effects: They seem to make patients oversexed and turn them into compulsive gamblers.
The behaviors appear in only a small percentage of Parkinson’s patients, but they’re still more common than in ordinary people, a new study suggests. And the side effects can be serious: 10 people who developed a gambling compulsion after going on drugs such as levodopa lost an average of $150,000 each.
The compulsive behavior in patients who take the drugs “is treatable and reversible, but people need to be aware of it,” said study co-author Dr. Valerie Voon, a research fellow at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Researchers have known about links between Parkinson’s drugs and compulsive behavior since the 1970s when doctors noticed that some patients were “hypersexual,” Voon said. In 2005, a study reported on 11 Parkinson’s patients who became compulsive gamblers after taking drugs to treat the disease; eight stopped the behavior after going off the medications.