Doctors didn’t warn women of ‘risky sex’ drug urges

2 comments

1. This is wild. I’m a doctor – not the kind that typically prescribes ropinirole, granted, so I haven’t used it much in my short career so far – and *I* never knew about this side effect. I remember learning about other potentially serious dopaminergic side effects, like hallucinations or dyskinesia, but not harmful sexual urges. Maybe doctors didn’t warn them because they also didn’t know, which isn’t an excuse, but there are so many medications to learn about these days that it’s hard to keep up if the drug companies aren’t being explicit in their warnings.

2. I work at a pharmaceutical manufacturing company. When our department was working on a Piribedil project, our lead chemist told us a “fun fact” that the substance can cause increased gambling urges. I researched it, and D2 dopamine agonists can indeed cause these kinds of side effects.

   It is very saddening that not only patients, but doctors too are unaware how serious psychoactive side effects can be, or don’t think of them as anything significant.

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