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Study finds no assoc btw pramipexole and gambling

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It will be interesting to see if this makes any headlines.

  While a study published in the December 2006 issue of Movement Disorders 
found a significantly higher incidence of pathological gambling (PG) among 
those with PD than among healthy controls, they FAILED to find ANY association 
between pramipexole alone and PG. They hypothesize that the apparent 
association btw PD and PG could be due to PD itself, or dopaminergic meds (in 
general - not dopamine agonists in particular) or both.

  The strengths of this study as compared to all of the previous studies 
claiming to find an association between pramipexole and PG are that the same 
data was collected in the same way from PWP and age/sex-matched healthy 
controls and then compared, and then also from age/sex-matched PWP who did not 
gamble pathologically and compared to the data collected from the PWP who did 
gamble pathologically.

  Also, they used standard statistical tools to analyze the data looking 
specifically for associations between PG and pramipexole, PG and depression, 
and PG and levodopa equivalent daily dose. They found none (i am not sure, 
given that, how they can conclude that one of the possible culprits could be 
dopaminergic therapy, but they do.)

  The weaknesses of this study are the small sample size, which weakens their 
prevalence findings. Also, they relied on self-reporting of the criteria for 
PG, which, due to stigma attached to socially unacceptable behaviors, could 
result in underreporting. This would have been more likely to be the case among 
the healthy controls, none of whom were accompanied by caregivers, as opposed 
to PWP, 90% of whom were accompanied by caregivers.

  Avanzi M, Baratti M, Cabrini S, Uber E, Brighetti G, Bonfa F.  Prevalence of 
pathological gambling in patients with Parkinson's disease.Mov Disord. 2006 
Dec;21(12):2068-72. PMID: 17044068

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