Chronic Dopamimetic Drug Addiction and Pathologic Gambling in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease - Presentation of Four Cases

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by motor and neuropsychiatric features. Within the latter, conditions such as psychosis, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), levodopa addiction and pathologic gambling are considered as secondary to the use of dopamimetic drugs. We present four patients with PD who developed clinical criteria for levodopa and pathologic gambling addiction, generalized anxiety disorder and OCD. They were 3 males and 1 female, with an average age of 65.8 years. They had been under levodopa treatment for a mean of 8.5 years. They used levodopa on an arbitrary basis, with an average dose of 2250 mg/d and bromocriptine with an average dose of 38.75 mg/d. None of them had a history of major depression, anxiety or