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August 31, 1996 Weight loss pills linked to lung ailment By Steve Sternberg Dieters who use certain weight loss drugs may lose more than excess poundage. A study in Europe indicates that fenfluramine and its cousin dexfenfluramine--recently approved for use in the United States-increase the risk of pulmonary hypertension. This ailment damages blood vessels in the lungs, leading to death from heart failure in more than 50 percent of cases. The course of disease is rapid deterioration, says Lucien Abenhaim, a researcher at Sir Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hospital and McGill University in Montreal and an author of the study. Death typically occurs within 2 to 5 years. The first clue that diet pills might prove deadly surfaced in the 1960s, when a rare lung disease began turning up with unusual frequency in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. It occurred mainly in women on diets. Doctors soon linked 500 cases of pulmonary hypertension, many of them fatal, to aminorex...