What Doctors Are Saying About Primary Pulmonary Hypertension and Fen-Phen

While some organizations and individual physicians are very careful in their efforts to be vague, or even tangential, about the relationship between PPH (Primary Pulmonary Hypertension) and fen-phen, others openly reveal what is known about this association.

Ronald J. Oudiz, M.D., Director of Pulmonary Hypertension, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center indicated (emedicine) that:

PPH (Primary Pulmonary Hypertension), more recently termed IPAH (Idiopathic Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension) has been associated with anorexigens and other alpha-adrenergic stimulants (fen-phen). How these associated conditions predispose to, or cause, PPH remains unknown.

In the US, IPAH (PPH) is responsible for approximately 125-150 deaths per year.

Typically, younger women of childbearing age develop IPAH (PPH). However, it can also affect women in their fifth and sixth decades of life or older.

The mortality rate for untreated IPAH (PPH) is approximately 50% at 3 years (varies with severity at presentation).

The American Heart Association indicates that an estimated 500 to 1,000 new cases of PPH are diagnosed each year in the United States. The greatest number is reported in women between the ages of 20 and 40. However, men and women in all ages and very young children develop PPH.

Appetite suppressants (fen-phen) are one of the factors believed to trigger the constriction, or narrowing, of the pulmonary artery.

One website devoted to information about Primary Pulmonary Hypertension states that PPH or Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension may be linked to the diet drug fen-phen:

A significant association exists between the use of the fen-phen diet drug and PPH. Studies have shown that it can be several years (ten or more) after having stopped taking diet drugs that patients develop the disease.

The American Lung Association reports that, in 2000, there were 3,065 deaths attributed to PPH. This organization also states: The use of certain appetite suppressants (fen-phen) has been found to increase the risk of developing PPH, especially use lasting more than three months.

They report that studies estimate that treatment with certain appetite suppressant drugs (fen-phen) increases the risk of getting PPH from approximately 1, to 28 cases per million person-years (one person-year represents a patient treated for one year). Two drugs associated with PPH, fenfluramine (one of the components of fen-phen) and dexfenfluramine, were taken off the market in September 1997 after being linked to heart valve damage.

The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute identifies factors that appear to increase the chances of developing PAH (pulmonary arterial hypertension. They include the use of appetite suppressants, especially fenfluramine (fen-phen) and dexfenfluramine.