By GINA KOLATA
The New York Times

To people who have struggled for a lifetime to lose weight, the new drug called rimonabant sounds like a dream come true.

It will make a person uninterested in fattening foods, they have heard from news reports and word of mouth. Weight will just melt away, and fat accumulating around the waist and abdomen will be the first to go.

And, by the way, those who take it will end up with higher levels of HDL, the good cholesterol. If they smoke, they will find it easier to quit. If they are heavy drinkers, they will no longer crave alcohol.

“Holy cow, does it also grow hair?” asked Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

At obesity treatment centers, nearly every patient asks for rimonabant — or Acomplia, as it will be called if its maker, Sanofi-Aventis, gets approval to market it in the United States.

But many medical researchers say not so fast. While rimonabant might be intriguing, these experts say, the mythology in the making is hardly justified by what is known so far.

There are no published studies from clinical trials to justify any of the claims for what some patients are already calling a miracle drug. The data that the company has presented indicate that rimonabant is about as effective for weight loss in obese people as two other drugs already on the market — sibutramine (sold under the brand name Meridia) and xenical (sold as Orlistat).

Nor are there any clinical tests to indicate how or whether it would work in people who are only moderately overweight.

Rimonabant has not been approved for sale in the United States or anywhere else. Sanofi-Aventis has not yet submitted its application for marketing to the Food and Drug Administration. The company says it plans to apply early next year.

All that adds up to a problem, says Dr. Madelyn Fernstrom, who directs the weight-management center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“It’s disturbing, in my view, the amount of attention this compound is getting,” Fernstrom said. “I’m underwhelmed by the results so far.”

Rimonabant blocks a protein in brain cells that allows cannabis, the active ingredient in marijuana, to work. It also blocks the body’s own versions of cannabis, the so-called endocannabinoids. Marijuana is supposed to increase appetite. So a drug that blocks cannabis, it seems logical, should suppress appetite.

Obese people have more receptors for endocannabinoids than thin people, said Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, a professor of medicine at Columbia University and the principal investigator of a large rimonabant study in the United States and Canada. The drug does not completely block these receptors, Pi-Sunyer said.

The idea of blocking these receptors worked in animals.

Rimonabant, said Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at Rockefeller University, “is the first in what I think will be a wave of rational therapies” that attack what has recently been learned about how eating is controlled. But with rimonabant, he said, “the issue is, what’s the safety and efficacy?”

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestat...on/10342885.htm

Meridia is under fire currently as an FDA whistle blower says it has safety problems.

As someone in the medical field, lemme tell ya that very few drugs are without significant dangers, with the side effects being bad as the disease "cured". With even Tylenol and Motrin having possibly life threatening side efects, my advice is to avoid all drugs unless absolutely necessary.
BTW, I get the same results from a low carb diet. Nyah Levi

Just what I was thinking. Everyone seems to want a quick fix, though, like a pill can overcome all of your problems. LC solves or controls so many problems the drug industry would likely cease to exist in its current form if lc were accepted universally.

You're right, acetaminophen and ibuprofen are two bad guys. Luckily, I rarely have headaches since I started lc'ing. Before, I had them at least once or twice per week.

I did not know this! Is aspirin ok (so far)?

Tylenol is one of the safest drugs you can take. The point is, even the very safest drugs can have side effects, there is no such thing as a perfectly safe drug. Even a simple antibiotic given for an ear infection can cause a life threatening allergic reaction etc.

The point is not that you shouldn't take tylenol or antibiotics or any other medication, just that you should only take them if you really need them.

All NSAIDs AFAIK can cause bleeding ulcers in the stomach, that includes aspirin. Tylenol can cause liver damage.

http://elfstrom.com/arthritis/nsaids/ulcers.html

Tylenol is one of the safest drugs you can take? It has side effects including liver and kidney damage. These dangers increase exponentially when taken in excess of the recommended doses. Take a good look at the recommended doses and see how often they are exceeded. While Motrin (ibuprofin) is somewhat more dangerous, don't kid yourself. I work in dialysis and kidney damage is not a trivial thing. Nyah Levi

My dad got severe liver damage from taking 1/2 the reccomended dosage of tylenol for 13 days. Before then his liver was perfectly healthy. (he doesnt drink alcohol and never has because he is allergic)