Our Requip lawyers will attempt here to explain to the skeptical the legal basis for the lawsuits against GlaxcoSmithKline, the manufacturer of Requip, for the gambling losses and consequent bankruptcies, divorces, broken families, and psychological and emotional suffering resulting from this dopamine agonist pharmaceutical.

In the view of many, gambling is a vice, and the opinion of those who hold this view is that gamblers should take their losses, just as they would have taken the economic benefit of wins. But in the view of our Requip attorneys, it isn’t so simple when a man or woman who has never gambled or has gambled only moderately is given a drug, such as Requip or Mirapex, which alters their brain chemistry so that they lose their “impulse control” to the point where they develop artificially induced obsessive compulsive disorders, including most prominently gambling addictions. These are people who did not have a compulsive gambling disorder before being prescribed Requip, but as scientific studies have demonstrated, after receiving Requip an increased number, above the percentage in any randomly selected population, develop a gambling addiction, and as our Requip lawyers also observe, returned to their normal lives, without a compulsive gambling disorder, as soon as they were taken off Requip or Mirapex.

Our Requip lawyers have reviewed the extant evidence with regard to Requip use and gambling disorders and have concluded that there is ample evidence for the association of Requip and the similar drug, Mirapex, and gambling addiction. Requip, a drug approved by the FDA for the treatment to reduce the motor “tremors” of Parkinson’s Disease and Restless Legs Syndrome. Requip serves this function because it is a “dopamine agonist,” a drug which mimics the function of this natural “neurotransmitter,” dopamine, in the brain. But while natural dopamine and the drug Requip, which mimics dopamine, has important motor functions, useful for these FDA approved indications, the drug’s effects on the brain reinforces certain behaviors, including gambling, eating disorders, and intimate relations, by increasing feelings of pleasure, specifically for these activities which humans find “rewarding.” As our Requip lawyers have seen it described in the scientific literature, this increased pleasure perceived by the brain associated with these rewarding behaviors, such as the “rush” associated with gambling, lead to obsessions, or obsessive compulsive disorders, and in particular compulsive gambling, as a function of a loss of “impulse control.”

The scientific literature with regard to both these dopamine agonists, Requip and Mirapex, is now overwhelming in its indictment of these drugs as responsible in particular for gambling addictions in people who did not suffer from compulsive gambling prior to being prescribed these drugs. Our Requip attorneys refer specifically to studies which are reviewed much more extensively on our “Requip lawyers compulsive gambling addiction page, finding that these dopamine agonists were associated with gambling addictions as early as 2003, first discovered by the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center, the findings of an increased incidence of gambling addiction which were then replicated by the Mayo Clinic in 2005, followed by additional replication in a large study of 3000 Requip and Mirapex patients finding that 13 percent suffered from at least 1 of 4 identified compulsive behaviors.

In terms of the liability of GlaxoSmithKline, our Requip lawyers have formed the opinion that the manufacturer should have warned of the risk of developing compulsive disorders, including specifically, gambling addiction. While the early studies focused mainly on Mirapex, the manufacturer clearly should have recognized that Requip served the same function – both as dopamine agonists for the same clinical indications – to likely have the same compulsive gambling side effects. The mechanism of action is the same, and the 1998 study then involved both Requip and Mirapex subjects, by then making plain, in the view of our Requip attorneys, that the identification of dopamine agonist complicity in gambling addiction was indisputable.

In the view of our Requip lawyers, those who suffered from Parkinson’s Disease or RLS and sought medical care for the tremors associated with their diseases were innocent for failing to understand that the consequence of their use of these dopamine agonists would be the loss of their impulse control, gambling addiction, economic devastation, and broken families. And in the view of our Requip attorneys, this was directly the result of the failure of GlaxcoSmithKline to warn of the risk of gambling addiction. This victims of corporate irresponsibility, in GSK’s endeavor to maintain profit for the sale of Requip, should not viewed as suffering from “vice,” but rather, suffering innocently from a drug induced compulsive disorder. In the view of our Requip lawyers, the victims of GSK’s failure to warn of the gambling addiction side effect of its drug should not be held in contempt, but offered only our compassion.

Ray Henke
Mr. Henke is a senior trial lawyer with the “Serious Injury Lawyers Law Group