What Should I Tell My Healthcare Provider?
If you have any of the following conditions, discuss this with your healthcare provider prior to taking ropinirole:
- Heart or blood vessel disease
- Liver failure
- Kidney disease
- Daytime sleepiness from a sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea, insomnia, or narcolepsy
- Alcoholism.
Also, be sure to tell your healthcare provider:
- About all of the medicines you take, including prescription and non-prescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements
- If you feel dizzy, nauseated, sweaty, or faint when you stand up from sitting or lying down (this is known as orthostatic hypotension)
- If you drink alcoholic beverages.
You should not take ropinirole if you are allergic to its active component or to any of the inactive ingredients. Your healthcare provider or pharmacist has a list of the inactive ingredients.
Ropinirole is part of a class of drugs called dopamine agonists. Dopamine resides in the part of the brain that coordinates muscle movement. When there is less dopamine in this area, muscles tend to become stiff and rigid. Ropinirole helps increase the amount of dopamine in your brain, "fooling" your nervous system into thinking that it has more dopamine than it really does. This helps reduce symptoms associated with both
Parkinson's disease and
restless legs syndrome.
Previous
