Side effects are a necessary evil when it comes to medication. Virtually any active medicine will have additional physical effects alongside the intended action of the substance, and these are usually relatively minor.

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Cures For Restless Legs Syndrome
Restless Leg Syndrome Medication Side Effects Gambling Disorder

Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a nervous system disorder that causes a severe urge to move your legs. Learn more about the symptoms, causes, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of restless legs.
Mirapex (pramipexole) is a dopamine agonist used to treat Parkinson's disease (PD) symptoms and restless leg syndrome (RLS) alone or with other medications. Common side effects of Mirapex include nausea, dizziness, sleepiness, difficulty sleeping, constipation, weakness, dizziness on standing, movement disorder, dry mouth, amnesia, and urinary frequency. Consult your doctor before taking if.

Physical side effects are usually tolerable, or may be managed using over-the-counter medicines or changes in lifestyle.

However, sometimes the side effects of a drug can be damaging in a non-physical sense. In fact, pramipexole—a drug used for restless leg syndrome and Parkinson’s disease—may actually lead to hypersexuality or even compulsive gambling. The link has been previously documented, but the information hasn’t been disseminated widely enough to protect patients from the unintended effects.

How Pramipexole Ruined A Patient’s Life

Tuscaloosa News’ People’s Pharmacy segment gives citizens a chance to share their experience with medicines and have their problems addressed by an expert. Last month, the section received a question from a patient suffering from restless leg syndrome who also found him or herself compulsively shopping and gambling. The individual commented “This medication has ruined my life. I discovered only recently that the compulsive behaviors are drug side effects,” and drew attention to the fact that the symptoms of the original condition were getting worse, if anything.

Such as gambling or spending. 20, 2014 (HealthDay News) - Drugs commonly used to treat Parkinson's disease may raise the restless leg syndrome medication compulsive gambling risk of so-called impulse control disorders, casino costa mesa ca according to a new review.9 Aug 2007 for restless leg syndrome (RLS) now includes an unusual side effect.

In response, the expert shared additional stories from other patients with the same problem. Although pramipexole (brand name Mirapex) is the most well-known cause, other similar drugs such as ropinirole (Requip) can also lead to impulsive behavior.

How Pramipexole Leads to Compulsive Behaviors

Pramipexole is a dopamine-agonist drug, and many people will know that dopamine is the neurotransmitter implicated in most cases of addiction. It’s the brain’s “reward” chemical, but people suffering from Parkinson’s disease are deficient in it. A dopamine agonist basically tops up the body’s dopamine supply (albeit in a synthetic form), so for that reason alone there is reason to be concerned about its potential relationship with addictive behavior. The dosage for restless leg syndrome is much lower than that for Parkinson’s, so it’s expected that those taking the drug for Parkinson’s are at greater risk of compulsive behaviors.

Because of the link between pramipexole and the body’s dopamine system, the drug appears to have an impact on behavior. Chisholm trail casino jobs. Patients who take the drug often report compulsive shopping, gambling, eating and sexual activity, which can understandably create many problems for the individual.

A Known Connection

Many studies have been conducted on the link between compulsive behavior and dopamine agonists, with the results showing that “impulse control disorders” are more common in both patients with Parkinson’s and restless leg syndrome who are receiving the drugs. A particularly large piece of research concluded that patients taking dopamine agonists are between two and three and a half times more likely to develop an impulse control disorder than those not taking them. The link isn’t fully understood, but it appears that the lower doses used in restless leg syndrome don’t remove the risk of developing compulsive behavior.

The role of the pharmaceutical companies has been questioned, with many high-profile lawsuits being filed related to the damaging side effects. According to some of these reports, the pharmaceutical companies were aware of the links between the drug and the conditions since the 1990s (when the link was revealed by a clinical trial), but they failed to take action to investigate the possibility further.

Additionally, the companies engaged in a marketing campaign targeted at physicians, which misrepresented the potential risks of the drugs. None of this type of behavior is particularly out of character for pharmaceutical companies—who are primarily concerned with selling pills, with serious side effects merely serving as a barrier to that goal—and the fact that the warning labels weren’t updated until 2005 shows the consequences this can have. The companies are now being ordered to make large payouts to account for the damages the drugs have caused.

What Should Patients Do?

If you’re a patient taking a dopamine agonist like pramipexole, the options are unfortunately limited. It’s worth noting that the incidence of these side effects is quite low, but there is still a chance you’ll develop them. If you’re experiencing symptoms of compulsive behavior after starting on a dopamine agonist, the best thing to do is to contact your doctor about it as soon as possible. Compulsive gambling, sex and shopping all have the potential to financially ruin patients or obliterate romantic relationships, so the importance of reducing their impact can’t be overstated. In the event of negative consequences, your physician may be able to suggest an alternative treatment. Do what you can to better your health!

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doi: 10.1093/sleep/32.5.587

PMID: 19480224

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

DOPAMINE AGONISTS, ROPINIROLE AND PRAMIPEXOLE, ARE THE ONLY FDA-APPROVED RESTLESS LEGS SYNDROME (RLS) THERAPIES. AS SUCH, THESE TWO dopamine agonists are considered the first line of treatment (generally at low doses) for RLS in current evidenced-based guidelines. Dopamine agonists have long been used at higher doses to treat Parkinson disease (PD), and compulsive behaviors are well known to be associated with dopamine agonist use at these levels. In a small number of case reports, however, gambling has been observed in individuals with RLS who were treated on a low dose of dopamine agonists.^– In addition, Ondo and Lai reported that of 89 RLS patients treated with dopamine agonists, 7 manifested compulsive shopping behaviors and 2 manifested gambling, though none were reported to manifest the compulsive eating reported in some PD cases. The authors noted that a failure to identify similar compulsive behavioral patterns among RLS and PD patients likely related more to the higher dopamine agonist treatment range in PD rather than to specific neurobiological etiologies underlying the two disorders. Thus, Ondo and Lai speculated that the potential for RLS patients to develop compulsive behaviors may be less noticeable given the smaller doses of dopamine agonists used to treat those patients.

Here, we describe a case of a 66-year-old woman with RLS diagnosed 14 years previously. She had been treated with levodopa, ropinirole, and pergolide at various times during the course of her RLS, without improvement in her symptoms. For 7 years she was successfully managed solely on pramipexole at a maximum dose of 0.25 mg daily, but eventually the patient’s symptoms grew more intense and began occurring earlier in the day. Her neurologist recommended she increase the pramipexole dose to 1.0 mg daily. After she had been on this dosage for one year without much improvement, she was referred to the RLS specialty team at our center for a second opinion.

After a thorough history and physical exam, it was concluded that this patient’s worsening symptoms were due to either disease progression or more likely, drug-induced augmentation. Due to strong suspicion of the latter, gabapentin was s

Restless Leg Syndrome Medication Side Effects Gambling