According to a new report published in the journal BMC Medicine, researchers found that people who stopped using the appetite suppressant fenfluramine (Fenphen) 11 years ago had damaged heart valves up to seven years later. Charles Dahl of the Central Utah Clinic led a team of researchers who studied the heart condition of 5,743 former fenfluramine users.

The diet drug Fenphen, which was widely marketed and prescribed in the 1990s, has been most closely linked to PPH and hundreds of lawsuits have been settled or litigated against American Home Products Corporation, the company that made Fenphen.

The authors of the study found that 0.44 percent of former fenfluramine users had valve surgery as a result of the use of fenfluramines. The risk of valve surgery was seven times greater in people who used the drugs compared with those who hadn’t taken the drug, the study said. “This is probably a conservative estimate, as another study has shown that there exists a 17- to 34-fold excess of clinically apparent — presumably severe — valvular disease in persons who had used fenfluramines for four months or longer,” Dahl said.

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