MONDAY, Oct. 20, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Drugs commonly used to treat Parkinson's disease may raise the risk of so-called impulse control disorders, according to a new review.

These disorders include compulsive gambling, compulsive shopping and/or hypersexuality.

That increased risk was seen in a fresh review of a decade's worth of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) records.

"What we have here is a striking example of a major problem in drug safety," said study author Thomas Moore, a senior scientist with the Institute of Safe Medication Practices and a lecturer in epidemiology and biostatistics at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. "And that is the issue of how drugs can sometimes provoke psychiatric side effects that actually make people behave in extremely destructive and abnormal ways."

Moore and his colleagues reported their findings online Oct. 20 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

According to the American Parkinson Disease Association, these medicines are part of a powerful and effective class of drugs known as dopamine receptor agonists. These medications work by mimicking the activity of the brain chemical dopamine.

The study's authors stressed that these medicines are widely used to treat a range of illnesses, including Parkinson's, restless leg syndrome and patients diagnosed with high levels of the hormone prolactin -- which can cause impotence in men and can prevent pregnancy in women.

More than 2 million such prescriptions were filled during the last three months of 2012 alone, the researchers noted.

To explore any risk for the development of impulse control issues, the study authors analyzed FDA data on 2.7 million domestic and foreign adverse drug events reported between 2003 and 2012.

Of these, 1,580 events were specifically identified as involving what investigators categorized as "serious" impulse control scenarios, with about half involving American patients. The remaining cases involved patients in 21 other countries.

Nearly 45 percent of these events (710) were linked directly to the use of any of six different dopamine receptor agonist medications, with most involving male patients (more than 65 percent) at an average age of 55. The other 55 percent of cases were associated with the use of other medications, the study found.