DIET DRUG'S HEART RISK SMALL, STUDIES FIND

BOSTON (AP) -- The risk of serious heart valve problems among people who
took the diet drugs Redux and phen-fen appears to be small, especially if
the drugs were used only briefly.

Redux and the chemically similar ``fen'' half of the two-drug phen-fen
combination were pulled from drugstores a year ago under pressure from the
Food and Drug Administration because of concern that the medicines cause
leaky valves.

Three studies on the subject were published in today's New England Journal
of Medicine. Together, they suggest that, while subtle heart valve damage
may be fairly common, especially among longtime users, it rarely is serious
enough to cause symptoms, at least in the first few years after going off
the pills.

One study involved data from nearly 10,000 people in Britain who took Redux
or the drugs phentermine or fenfluramine, the components of phen-fen. They
were treated by general practitioners between 1988 and 1996, well before the
scare over the drugs. During this time, only cases that caused symptoms of
the heart valve damage typically came to the practitioners' attention.

Short-term results

During about four years of follow-up, 11 new cases of heart valve damage
were detected among users of Redux or fenfluramine. No cases were diagnosed
in a comparison group.

The researchers counted seven cases of heart valve damage among every 10,000
people who took Redux or fenfluramine for fewer than four months. An
additional 35 cases showed up among those who took the drugs longer.

``The risk of developing clinically important valve disease if they took the
drugs for three months or less is extremely low,'' said Dr. Hershel Jick of
Boston University Medical Center, the study's director. ``If they took it
longer, it's measurable but not very high.''

In another report, Dr. Mehmood Khan and others from the Hennepin County
Medical Center in Minneapolis performed echocardiograms on 233 people who
had used Redux or phen-fen. They found heart valve abnormalities in 23
percent of them, compared with 1 percent of a control group not using the
drugs.

Longer follow-up will be needed to know the extent of damage later in life,
Khan cautioned.

Reaffirming decision

This latest evidence, said Dr. Richard Devereux of New York Hospital-Cornell
Medical Center in an editorial, ``reaffirms the wisdom of the FDA's decision
to withdraw (the drugs) from the market.''

1997 - 1998 Mercury Center.

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst