The prescription diet drug sibutramine, sold under the brand name Meridia, should be taken off the market because it raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes in some patients, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine said Wednesday.

Those risks, published in January on a government clinical-trials Web site and now in full in the journal, outweigh the modest benefits of the medication, said Dr. Gregory Curfman, the journal’s executive editor and lead author of an editorial that accompanied the study.