PPH Lawyers

Could Fen-Phen Have Been Prevented?

Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH), until recently also called Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) is a potentially fatal disorder in which blood pressure in the pulmonary artery spikes without reason. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), over a thousand new cases of PPH are diagnosed every year, mainly in women between the ages of 20 and 40.

Although there is no definitive cause for PPH, it has been linked to the drug cocktail Fen-Phen, which refers to a combination of the diet drugs Redux (dexfenfluramine) and Pondimin (fenfluramine) and another drug, phentermine. Both drugs were taken off the market in 1997.

All this is has been dramatized and popularized by the media, but what is more shocking and less well-known is that warnings about the link between PPH and diet drugs were already apparent before Redux even hit the market. Redux was approved in April 1996 after heavy lobbying by American Health Products (AHP) to suppress a possible black box warning, despite 100 documented cases of PPH in diet drug users in Europe which happened earlier in the year. By the end of the year, 18 million prescriptions for Fen-Phen had been issued in the US alone. The question is obvious: shouldn’t someone have heeded the warning?

Although Fen-Phen was recalled in 1997, the onset of PPH may be delayed by up to 10 years. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with PPH, call a PPH attorney at Williams Kherkner right away to learn about your legal options.