If you have Parkinson’s Disease and are experiencing daytime “Sleeping Attacks,” it could be a side effect of the medicine you are taking.

Daytime sleepiness is a well-recognized side effect of Dopamine agonists, drugs commonly prescribed to treat Parkinson’s Disease.  Two commonly prescribed agonists are pramipexole and ropinirole.

These drugs have recently been linked to an increase in car accidents among Parkinson’s sufferers who’ve had sleeping attacks while driving their cars.

            Dr. Carl Nikolaus Homann and colleagues at Franzens University hospital in Austria found 20 reports of sleep-related side effects, which involved a total of 124 patients.

            According to their report, published in the British Medical Journal, the patients seemed to experience two major types of sleep related side effects; “sleep attacks,” which occurred without warning, and “sleeping episodes,” which were marked by extreme sleepiness, but did not occur without warning.

            Sleep attacks and sleep episodes not only occurred in patients who were using varying types of dopamine agonists for the first time, but also among patients who had been on the therapy for 20 years.

            Researchers also identified 17 patients who experienced a sleeping attack while driving; 10 crashed as a result.

            Health officials in the United States, Canada and the European Union have asked manufacturers to warn patients against driving while on the drugs.

            Despite the number of documented crashes’ some experts disagree, saying the attacks are too infrequent to recommend that people stop driving.