A major Parkinson's prescription could be more of a gamble than you thought…
Gambling compulsively until your house is on the line…hypersexual behavior…sounds straight out of an episode of CSI, right? Certainly nothing that has any place in YOUR life… Well… Therapeutic doses—the dose deemed to be at least minimally beneficial—of drugs are supposed to be…well, therapeutic. But a new study conducted at the Mayo Clinic reveals they could be anything but. Researchers analyzing the medical records of patients with Parkinson's disease receiving care at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester between 2004 and 2006 were shocked at what they called "definitive findings." The dopamine agonists so commonly used for Parkinson's disease put patients at risk for developing destructive behaviors—including compulsive gambling and hypersexuality. And in how many patients were these effects observed? One in 1,000? Nope. One in 100? Give up? One in almost five. And that could be low-balling it. Because researchers were looking at charts, they only learned about the situations that the patients actually told their doctors about. Who knows how many people were too disturbed or embarrassed to let their doctors know about their new behaviors? It turns out this isn't the first time this connection has come up. Reports from a 2005 case series alerted the Clinic "something bad was happening to some unfortunate people." Yeah, I'll say. Of course, the recommendation that follows the news is almost laughable. In a video produced by the Mayo Clinic, we're reassured that this doesn't mean we have to stop taking the drugs. At least one person, we're told, has dropped the dose by about one-third and has "been okay." I wonder how much of his life savings he had to lose before he got to that "okay" point. Source:
"Parkinson's Disease Medication Triggers Destructive Behaviors." Newswise (www.newswise.com), 4/8/09. | 
