Aminorex to Fen/Phen : An Epidemic Foretold Print ISSN: 0009-7322. Online ISSN: 1524-4539 Copyright © 1999 American Heart Association, Inc. All rights reserved. is published by the American Heart Association, 7272 Greenville Avenue, Dallas, TX 75231 Circulation doi: 10.1161/01.CIR.99.1.156 1999;99:156-161 Circulation. http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/99/1/156 World Wide Web at: The online ve...

To the Editor: The review by Fishman1 seems to bring simple answers to a rather complex problem that deserves a more exhaustive analysis. This article establishes a link between an aminorex epidemic of pulmonary hypertension between 1965 and 1972 and the recent fenfluramine affair. By deductive reasoning, the author suggests that all of the complications attributed to fen-phen or fenfluramine a...

Appetite suppressants have been associated with primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH), inhibition of voltage-gated potassium channels, membrane depolarization, and calcium entry in pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells. In cells taken from pulmonary arteries of primary pulmonary hypertensive patients, voltage-gated potassium channels appear to be dysfunctional and in particular, reduced hKv1.5 ge...

Over the years, a variety of diets and drugs for the treatment of obesity have come and gone. More recently, newspapers, radio, and television have featured the rise and fall of the latest appetite-suppressants, dexfenfluramine and the combination of fenfluramine and phentermine (fen/phen). The rise occurred after approval of dexfenfluramine by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); the fall w...

The first World Health Organization conference on pulmonary hypertension, held in 1971 in Geneva, Switzerland [2], had been convened to investigate the first drug-induced epidemic of so-called ‘‘primary’’ pulmonary hypertension. The clinicians had noted an unusual increase in the number of patients with often fatal pre-capillary pulmonary hypertension and, by connecting the dots, they identifie...