Prescription diet drug raises risk of heart attack, stroke
Thursday, September 2, 2010 - 10:56
in Health & Medicine
Sibutramine, which alters brain chemicals to suppress appetite, carries risks for users with a history of cardiovascular disease. One doctor says it should be pulled off shelves.The prescription diet drug sibutramine, sold under the brand name Meridia, should be taken off the market because it raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes in some patients, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine said Wednesday. Those risks, published in January on a government clinical-trials website and now in full in the journal, outweigh the modest benefits of the medication, said Dr. Gregory D. Curfman, the journal's executive editor and lead author of an editorial that accompanied the study.