Rimonabant

Rimonabant is a weight loss product that was originally developed to be an aid for those trying to quit smoking. It was sold in Europe under the name Acomplia and has helped promote weight loss in the severely obese. Rimonabant is a product that has been produced by the same makers of the successful prescription products Ambien (a sleep aid) and Allegra (an anti-allergen). It is always encouraging to find a product that has been manufactured by an already demonstrably competent company since, unfortunately, this is seldom the case with weight loss supplement producers.

The Good

There has been some evidence that Rimonabant has shown weight loss proclivities for its users. However, this isn’t the situation for all users and, therefore, results will vary from user to user. It is a good sign that it has been effective. This means that there is at least one thing working with this product.

The Bad

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the United States has never approved this product for sale in the U.S. but the manufacturers of this product assure us that there is a patent pending. Patents are not the same as FDA approval, just for the record. Many of the countries where this product was originally approved for sale have since banned it citing the potential costs of Rimonabant outweigh the benefits. Sanofi-Aventis has since suspended the making of Rimonabant, but they held out for an extended period of time, and some have accused them of actually holding back negative study results, including severe depression in many cases in one study and at least one suicide. Previously named side effects included frequent and severe cases of depression, development of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, dependence, impairment of short term memory, etc.

The Skinny

It should be apparent that the benefits you may achieve with Rimonabant are completely overshadowed by the extremely long list of potential harmful side effects and the fact that it has been widely banned throughout the world. We do not recommend Rimonabant.