A new study by French researchers showed that the number of deaths attributable to heart-valve insufficiency as a result of the use of benfluorex, a fenfluramine derivative drug under the name of Mediator manufactured by a pharmaceutical company Servier in France is much greater than previously thought.

The new study by the French researchers published in the journal Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety said that the French pharmaceutical company’s drug Mediator is likely responsible for thousands of hospitalizations and deaths over a 30 year period.

A researcher from the French biomedical and public health research institute, National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) Mahmoud Zureik said that nearly 3,100 people had required hospitalization during the period of 33 years during which the drug was sold, adding that these figures could well be an underestimate.

The latest study fine-tunes an estimate by Zureik, who co-led the probe in 2010 that the death toll from the scandal was between 1,000 and 2,000.

Researchers said that the benfluorex which is marketed by Servier under the name of Mediator was at first licensed to decrease the levels of fatty proteins called lipids, with the claim that it helped the people with diabetics and control their level of blood sugar.  However, this drug also suppressed appetite, which meant that it achieved a secondary official use to help obese diabetics lose weight.

The study showed that Mediator was extensively sold on prescription for non-diabetics wanting to slim.

In 2009, Mediator, an amphetamine-based drug was pulled from the European market amid facts that it damaged heart valves and caused pulmonary hypertension and its manufacturer is being probed on doubt of corrupt practices and deception.

The recent research study by published in the Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety is an extrapolation based on figures for fatalities from defective heart valves, even though not from hypertension, among major users of the drug.

The French pharmaceutical said that 145 million packets of Mediator drug were sold on the French market before the drug was pulled.

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