Gambling Drugs
Published: Friday, July 15, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
GAMBLING DRUGS
A side effect the drug manufacturer didn't plan
Associated Press reported an intriguing story this week of an unusual side-effect
from a drug normally prescribed for sufferers of Parkinson's Disease.
The story records that a Californian man using the drug Mirapex for Parkinson's
Disease is suing the drug manufacturer, Boehringer-Ingelheim after losing thousands
of dollars playing slot machines in a nearby casino several times a day for almost
two years.
Then he came across an Internet report that linked the drug with compulsive gambling.
He stopped taking Mirapex, and within three days found that his compulsion to
gamble vanished.
A Mayo Clinic study published in July’s Archives of Neurology describes 11
other Parkinson’s patients who developed the same unusual problem while taking
Mirapex or similar drugs between 2002 and 2004. Doctors have since identified
14 additional Mayo patients with the problem, said lead author Dr. M. Leann Dodd,
a Mayo psychiatrist.
“It’s certainly enough for us to be cautious as we are using it,”
Dodd said. “We wouldn’t want them to have some kind of financial ruin
or difficulties that could be prevented.”
Dr. Leo Verhagen, a Parkinson’s specialist at Chicago’s Rush University
Medical Center who was not involved in the study, says he and some colleagues
all have a few patients who developed compulsive gambling while taking Mirapex,
a drug that relieves tremors and stiffness. The behavior usually disappears when
the drug dose is lowered, Verhagen said. He praised the Mayo article for raising
awareness for doctors and patients.
The 54 year old Californian was not treated at Mayo or involved in the study.
He said the problem is underreported “...because of the embarrassment factor”
and is one of several patients suing the manufacturer, accusing the company of
failing to adequately warn patients about the potential side effects.
California attorney Daniel Kodam, who filed the lawsuit last year, said he’s
spoken with more than 200 Mirapex patients who developed compulsive behaviors,
including excessive gambling, sex and shopping. He is seeking to have the complaint
certified as a nationwide class-action lawsuit. A similar suit has been filed
in Canada, Kodam said.
Parkinson’s disease is a disorder of the central nervous system that affects
more than 1 million Americans.
It is alleged that the Food and Drug Administration was contacted but failed to
act on numerous adverse reaction reports about Mirapex. An FDA spokeswoman said
the agency is examining the reports to determine if there’s any connection
to the drug but declined to say how many it has received.
Katherine King O’Connor, a spokeswoman for the Ridgefield, Conn.-based Boehringer-Ingelheim
Pharmaceuticals, said there’s no scientific evidence that Mirapex causes
the problem. Still, the company revised Mirapex’s package insert earlier
this year to include compulsive behavior among potential side effects after receiving
“rare” reports — all after the drug was approved for U.S. use in
1997, O’Connor said.
Mirapex was among top-selling Parkinson’s drugs last year, with more than
$200 million in U.S. sales, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information
and consulting firm.
Though a few of the Mayo patients took related drugs, Dodd said most used Mirapex.
They included a 68-year-old man who lost more than $200,000 at casinos over six
months and a 41-year-old computer programmer who became “consumed” with
Internet gambling, losing $5,000 within a few months.
Dodd said Mayo doctors now ask patients using the drugs if they have suddenly
taken up gambling. Affected patients are usually switched to different drugs or
doses, and the result is often dramatic, “like a light switch being turned
off when they stopped the drug,” she said.
