It was developed in the 1960s as an anorectic,[1][2][3] but withdrawn from sale after it was discovered that extended use produced pulmonary hypertension, often followed by heart failure, which resulted in a number of deaths.
[4] A designer drug analogue 4-methylaminorex appeared on the illicit market in the late 1980s but did not attract significant popularity due to its steep dose-response curve and tendency to produce seizures.
[10][11] Pemoline was sold for around 25 years as a therapy for ADHD and relief of fatigue, before being withdrawn from the market in 2005 because of rare but serious cases of liver failure.
[12][13][14][15] More recently in around 2014 another derivative 4,4'-dimethylaminorex started to be sold illicitly, but again swiftly lost popularity due to a spate of fatal overdose cases.
[16][17][18] A number of related compounds are known, and new derivatives have continued to appear on the designer drug market.