Does Parkinsons disease cause compulsive behavior or is it the drugs to help control Parkinsons that cause the compulsive behavior. This is the questions researchers have recently started asking.

Researchers are now saying that the compulsive behavior common in Parkinson patients especially compulsive gambling may have more to do with the disease then the drugs used to control the tremors cause by the disease.

An assistant professor of neurology at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, has suggested that new methods to determine if the erratic behavior is from the drugs or the disease will be needed.

Earlier this year there were several reports of Parkinsons patients having lost their homes after becoming horribly addicted to gambling. Many of these patients had just started taking their anti Parkinsons drugs to help control the effects of the disease which are most commonly extreme tremors when they developed their gambling problems.

According to experts compulsive gambling over eating and hyper sexuality are increasingly being reported in Patients, but there is no standardized testing to diagnose these behaviors.

48 Parkinsons patients were tested and 13 of the patients admitted to having some newly developed compulsive behaviors and of the 13 they managed to discover 29 different types of compulsions.

At first we reported this to some Doctors and they did not believe us until they started asking their Parkinsons patients if they had developed any of these symptoms and found that many had.

"It maybe the disease or it may be the drugs," said the project director of the Washington, DC-based Parkinson Pipeline Project.