Quoted from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/health/research/02diet.html
Study Sees Heart Risk in Meridia Diet Pill
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: September 1, 2010
A clinical trial of Meridia, a controversial diet pill, in nearly 10,000 overweight or obese older patients over many years found that the drug increased the risks of heart attacks and strokes while doing little to slim their waists.
JB Reed/Bloomberg News
Abbott Laboratories financed a study of 10.000 overweight patients using its diet drug.
The study was paid for by Abbott Laboratories, Meridia’s maker, and published in The New England Journal of Medicine. And the authors of the study, three of whom are Abbott employees, concluded that the trial results did little more than show that patients with heart problems should not be prescribed Meridia — a restriction already included in Meridia’s label.
But in an unusual rebuke, The Journal’s top editors wrote an editorial concluding that the study actually showed that Meridia, also known as sibutramine, should be removed from the market.
“It wasn’t that we disagreed with the interpretation of the authors,” said Dr. Gregory D. Curfman, The Journal’s executive editor. “It’s just that we thought they didn’t quite go far enough.” Many patients, Dr. Curfman added, “have cardiovascular disease and don’t know it. How are you supposed to identify those patients who might be put at risk by putting them on drugs like sibutramine?”