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"Parkinson's Drug Drove Me to Sex With Strangers": Patient

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Manchester, UKDrug side effects and allegedly harmful drugs push the limits with regard to society's definition of safety, given the inherent expectation that if a drug is on the market, available, approved and prescribed then it must be safe. But that's hardly the case given the regulatory position that a drug is considered safe simply if its benefits outweigh the risks.

Such is the case with drugs that treat symptoms of Parkinson's. The adverse reactions can be devastating.

A recent story about a Parkinson's sufferer in the UK is easily translatable to the American market given that ropinirole, the non-ergoline dopamine agonist is sold as Requip in the US. A class-action lawsuit is currently being explored in the UK, targeting the makers of ropinirole and other dopamine agonists.

It's all because of what happened to people like Kathy.

It's not her real name, but her story is compelling. The soft-spoken mother of two from Manchester was afflicted by Parkinson's at 44 and was put on ropinirole and other drugs to manage her symptoms.

She was soon launched into a world of bizarre behavior that was completely foreign to her.

Gambling was one. Kathy found herself playing the lottery constantly. She also discovered on-line poker. Despite not knowing how to play the game she dove in, racking up bills exceeding US $300 each night.

There was also a powerful urge to shop. Kathy found herself rising in the middle of the night, driving to 24-hour superstores to buy things she had no use for.

Drugs Drove Her to Sex

But worst of all, while taking dopamine agonists to manage the symptoms of her Parkinson's Kathy developed an insatiable appetite for sex. "I was brought up in a normal family, with proper moral standards and I lived by those standards,'' she said in comments published October 19th in the London Daily Telegraph. "But, after I started taking the drugs, everything changed.''

Kathy began cruising the Internet for fetish wear and began meeting strangers at motels for sex. She and her husband slept in separate beds, so her behaviour was shielded from her mate.

They are no longer together.

A 2006 paper, published in the journal Neurology by Valerie Voon of the National Institute of Health in Maryland described side effects of dopamine agonists that included increased libido, compulsive gambling, shopping and eating. In many cases, patients have spent their entire life savings, businesses have gone bankrupt and marriages have broken down.

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READER COMMENTS

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this story is very much like me and my partner,s story the only difference is me and sue are still together just about , my partner sue and i have been together for twenty year,s now we have two lads 14 and 15 and were a very close and happy family , sue was dx with pd 2009 and got put straight onto repinerole her gp,s and consultant,s said you might get a few side effect,s off these drug,s like most drug,s but they did,nt tell us how terrible it could get and harmfull to my family it would become or we would never of took the risk we were very much in love and happy , so sue started to take the drug,s and started to change i worked away from home as a builder bringing home great money sue was a nursery nurse things were going good i thought sue looked after the house and kid,s and the finanses so i thought then i started finding letter,s about debt,s we owed we was never in debt she use to tell me it was mistake,s she would sort it and it all went out of control we nearly lost the house a few time,s had to go to court a few times she become a compulsive liar and i could never get the truth out of her so i decided to stay at home for abit and get these problem,s sorted that never happened i lost my work and over the next year lost my best friend she also went out of control with sex 24 7 she started getting into porn and her fantasie,s lost all her inabishans , what i had,nt realised was how extreme she was getting with this sex and webcaming cyber sex we had started sleeping seperately so she kept it secret for a while and then the lads would say to me to stop going on these porn site,s which kept popping up on the pc,s but it was,nt me so i started monitering the pc,s and catching sue on these site,s but she was that unreasnable about this , she would,nt stop , if i said anythink to her she would go mad and walk out , she use to use this as a excuse to go out and look for sex and drug,s she had never had drug,s before i kept telling the gp.s about this there advice was you need relate which would,nt of helped she was out of control on requip this went on for 2 and a half years before the consultants would listen to me by now i was at the end of my patience with it all , the only thing that saved us was i educated myself and realised what was going on and that is what kept us together it was,nt my best friend doing this to me it was a stranger just after xmas this year the gp,s listened and took her off the requip and put sue on sinemet and it was like turning a light switch on within week,s we got her back but it has left her scared for life now sorry for what she had done , we are trying to fix our live,s now after living this nightmare and thing,s are getting better now but i can,t believe how much damage to our live,s we were left to deal with

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