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A popular diabetes drug is still being prescribed two months after a safety body recommended its withdrawal.

The British Medical Journal discovered that the Commission on Human Medicines had advised regulators in July that rosiglitazone, marketed as Avandia, should be banned amid fears it can increase the risk of heart attacks. The drug, made by GlaxoSmithKline, was approved by the European Medicines Agency in 2000 to help lower blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Professor John Yudkin of University College London said: "We need to be certain long term treatments for type 2 diabetes are not causing the very harm they are meant to prevent."