Brief Answer:
Parkinson's Disease medication side effects

Detailed Answer:
Good evening. I am Dr. Saghafi and a neurologist. I have treated many patients with PD and I've had a number throughout my career for whom we believed were presenting with symptoms of Compulsive disorder only to find after thorough neuropsychological evaluation that they were not in fact, suffering with side effects and instead had evidence of other things going on. Of course, I can't say that I've ever had a case exactly like yours with the behavior of compulsive masturbation, however, other types of behaviors were just as pervasive and uncomfortable for them...but in the end they turned out to not likely be engaging in those types of activities as a result of side effects.

Please understand that I'm not trying to minimize the importance of what you're saying. I'm simply saying that the likelihood of these symptoms being direct side effects from your medication regimen in some way is less likely than for the behavior to be secondary to something else.

One way to test the hypothesis that medication is responsible for the behavior is simply stop the drug for a period of time and allow it to wash out and see what happens to the masturbatory activity. Of course, if these medications are absolutely critical for the PD symptoms then, you may experience an increase in parkinsonisms until the medication(s) are restarted.

I'm not sure I would agree that of all the medications you've mentioned that levothyroxine is the most likely suspect drug if in fact, side effects are the explanation to what's going on. Usually, compulsive and/or obsessive/compulsive disorders are due to LEVODOPA products not LEVOTHYROXINE.

The other way to approach this issue to have neuropsychological testing performed which could elucidate the difference between a neurobehavioral compulsion vs. no compulsive or obsessive behaviors likely. That is how we approach patients when there is a question of this sort of thing. I've only found a very small percentage of patients on levodopa products which were behaving aberrantly directly as a result of the medication's side effect.

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