Mirapex has been associated with compulsive behavior, including gambling addiction
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Mirapex – also known as pramipexole -, which is used to treat Parkinson’s Disease and restless leg syndrome, has been associated with compulsive behavior, including gambling addiction. If you or someone you know developed a gambling addiction or some other compulsive behavior after starting treatment with this drug, contact one of our Mirapex side effect attorneys.
Mirapex Breaking News
Mirapex Victim Awarded $8.2 Million in First Gambling Addiction Lawsuit
The first Mirapex lawsuit to go to trail has resulted in an $8.2 million
award to the plaintiff, Mealey’s Emerging Drugs & Devices is reporting. The lawsuit was the first of more than 300 to go to trail in the Mirapex multidistrict litigation in the US District Court in Minneapolis that blame the Parkinson’s Disease drug for causing compulsive gambling. It was considered a bellweather case, and was being watched by many to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of the other Mirapex lawsuits.
Gary Charbonneau, who began taking Mirapex in December 1997, said he suffered from a gambling addiction from March 2002 to February 2006. In that period of time, he gambled away $260,000. Charbonneau’s lawsuit not only claimed that Mirapex caused his gambling problem, but that the drug’s makers, Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim, knew about its potential to cause compulsive behavior, but did not issue any warnings, or take steps to investigate the true scope of the problem.
Mirapex Information
Mirapex is a dopamine agonist. This means it stimulates nerves in the brain which are normally stimulated by dopamine, a brain chemical that helps control motor functions and movement. Mirapex is the most commonly prescribed drug in its class.
Mirapex was approved by the FDA in 1997 and by the end of 2004 accounted for almost 18 percent of prescriptions written to treat Parkinson’s disease. Since its approval, hundreds of Mirapex users have claimed that they developed compulsive behaviors.
In addition to gambling addictions, people treated with Mirapex have suffered from compulsive shopping, sexual addictions, eating disorders, and other impulse control disorders. In almost case, the victims of Mirapex side effects had no prior history of obsessive compulsive behaviors. And in most cases, the compulsive behavior subsides once Mirapex is discontinued.
Mirapex has long been suspected of causing compulsive behavior. The suspicion was bolstered in June, when researchers investigating the link between dopamine agonists and compulsive behavior presented their findings at International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders conference in Chicago. The study, which looked at more than 3,000 patients from 46 medical centers in the United States and Canada, found that Parkinson’s patients on dopamine agonists are nearly three times more likely to have at least one impulse-control disorder – including gambling addiction – compared with patients receiving other treatments.
Mirapex Label Change
Due to these reports, the Mirapex package insert was changed to state adverse events including “accidents (including fall), compulsive behaviors (sexual and pathological gambling), fatigue, hallucinations (all kinds), headache, hypotension, libido disorder, syncope, and blackouts.”Furthermore, a 2003 report in the journal “Neurology” covered the work of researchers at the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center in Arizona. They surveyed 1,800 Parkinson’s patients over a one year period and determined that of the 529 patients in the study who took Mirapex, eight developed gambling addictions. Since Mirapex is prescribed to millions of patients, this means that thousands of users may be experiencing these compulsions.