Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH) and Diet Drugs

Pulmonary Hypertension has only been the subject of serious medical research in the past 10-15 years, although the disease has been known since the 1950s. Most researchers originally believed that Pulmonary Hypertension was related to preexisting lung diseases such as emphysema. Although it is often the result of other conditions, Pulmonary Hypertension today is recognized as existing without any other known cause. Unfortunately, Pulmonary Hypertension is still a disease that doctors know relatively little about. However, in recent years many specialists have emerged to break new ground on research involving how the lungs function and have used that knowledge to develop treatments.

What they have learned is that the disease arises inside the tiny blood vessels of the lungs. These blood vessels produce complicated chemical compounds that control their behavior and size. In some people, a chemical called endothelin which causes these blood vessels to constrict is overproduced. The reasons for this are still unknown. In some cases the cause is genetically programmed or the person is predisposed genetically and gets Pulmonary Hypertension after being exposed to a certain drug.

Although no one knows what the true number of people with Pulmonary Hypertension is, the numbers have increased dramatically in the past 6 years. Doctors and researchers have concluded the cause of this increase was the widely prescribed diet drug Fen Phen. Before these drugs were used by more than 6 million people in 1996 and 1997, the best estimates were that only one or two in a million people could get Pulmonary Hypertension. In the years since Phen Fen was used, the incidence has jumped to ten times that number by some estimates. According to a New Journal of Medicine study, 1 in 20,000 Fen Phen users is at risk of getting PPH. Thus, by taking diet drugs, a person with a one in a million chance of getting PPH, increases that likelihood by several orders of magnitude.

According to doctors who treat patients with Pulmonary Hypertension, those who contract it through Fen Phen and diet drugs, tend to have more severe cases. Dr. Stuart Rich, one of the world's foremost authorities on Pulmonary Hypertension, writes of patients who have Pulmonary Hypertension related to diet drugs: "Although the syndrome is indistinguishable from primary pulmonary hypertension, our experience suggests these patients tend to have a more aggressive disease with a poorer prognosis than similar patients with PPH (Pulmonary Hypertension). This may be a result of the fenfluramines triggering a unique molecular pathway that produces pulmonary vasculopathy."


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Although Pulmonary Hypertension cannot be cured using existing medicine. It can be controlled with new drugs and therapies.

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