Viva Las Vegas!

This news story from Scientific American.com is interesting.

Researchers have identified a strange side effect to a treatment for Parkinson's disease: excessive gambling. Some patients taking medications known as dopamine agonists developed the problem within six months of starting treatment, even though they had previously gambled only occasionally or never at all. "This is a striking effect," remarks J. Eric Ahlskog of the Mayo Clinic, a co-author of the new study. "Pathological gambling induced by a drug is really quite unusual."

Some of the people lost as much as $100,000 and one person's marriage broke up. The gambling urge only appeared in a small number of the patients, and as the medications were reduced the gambing urge disappeared.

What really stands out to me is that it occured in some people who had never gambled before. Of course, this raises questions: Why gambling of all things? What is the mechanism at work here and why did it only occur in a few people? Does this have implications for agency and responsibility? If this can be drug-induced, might it not occur naturally as well?