Following an FDA warning issued this past summer, patients taking Abilify are advised to watch for signs of Abilify gambling addiction.

Abilify is a brand name for the generic psychiatric drug aripiprazole. After over a decade on the market, it’s now approved by the FDA as a treatment for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Tourette’s disorder and irritability associated with autistic disorder.

It’s also approved to be used in combination with other drugs as a treatment for depression.

Despite reports of adverse side effects, Abilify has won enough proponents to make it a significant success for manufacturer Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Sales of Abilify in 2013 reached $6.4 billion, making it the top-selling drug in the U.S. The FDA reports that in 2015, Abilify was prescribed about 7.7 million times to about 1.6 million patients.

Abilify is one of a newer class of psychiatric medications known as atypical antipsychotics. These drugs are believed to work by adjusting the effect of neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin.

Abilify is different from other drugs in this class in that it does not block dopamine activity as much as the other drugs do.

Researchers think the difference in how Abilify handles dopamine may explain why some patients develop Abilify gambling addiction.

FDA: Be Alert for Signs of Abilify Gambling Addiction

In a Drug Safety Communication issued May 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned that patients taking Abilify and other brand-name and generic drugs based on the generic drug aripiprazole have reported uncontrollable urges to engage in potentially destructive behaviors.

Reports filed with the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System, or FAERS, revealed that Abilify patients had been overcome with urges to “gamble, binge eat, shop, and have sex.” Patients reported their Abilify gambling addiction seemed to stop when they stopped taking the drug.

The agency said it reviewed its FAERS database from as far back as 2002, when Abilify was first approved for use in the United States.

Reviewers found 184 reports associating aripiprazole use and impulse-control behavior problems. Pathological gambling was the most commonly reported problem, the agency said.

The agency noted that the FAERS database contains only reports submitted to the FDA. Other cases of compulsive behavior may have gone unreported.

In its communication, the FDA announced that it would strengthen the existing warning on the drug’s label about Abilify gambling addiction.

The agency commented that even though the current label for Abilify bears a warning about pathological gambling as a reported side effect, that description “does not entirely reflect the nature of the impulse-control risk that we identified.”

The FDA also added new warnings about other compulsive behaviors associated with Abilify.

Abilify compulsive behavior has also been documented in several clinical studies. In one study by French researchers conducted in 2013, seven out of eight patients studied exhibited symptoms of compulsive behavior that could be traced to Abilify.

Similar results were documented in two studies from 2011. One patient reported obsessive thoughts about gambling that drove him to plan criminal activity in order to fund his gambling habit. In all these studies, the patient’s compulsion to gamble resolved after they stopped taking Abilify.