Arguably the world’s most serious, or at least widespread, health problem is obesity. Many people struggle their entire lives with it, using exercise, diet, and supplements to bring their weight under control. For people who have this problem, help may be on the way, and for a more affordable price, in the form of Generic Acomplia, also known as Rimnobant. Rimnobant is an anorectic anti-obesity drug, a CB1 cannabinoid receptor antagonist whose primary value in reducing excessive weight is through appetite control. Rimnobant works by obstructing the receptors controlling food intake and energy expenditure which reside in the body’s cells. By obstructing these receptors, an individual experiences a reduction in appetite, contributing to weight loss in conjunction with diet and exercise.
Rimnobant is recommended for individuals who have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 kg/m2 or greater and associated complications including type 2 diabetes. Rimnobant is the first diet drug of its type to be legally approved and available anywhere in the world. It has been on the market in the United Kingdom since 2006 and received a letter of approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February 2006. Furthermore, the European Commission approved the distribution of the diet drug in the European Union in 2006. The drug, under the brand name Acomplia, is manufactured by Sanofi-Aventis.
Historically, the most effective diet supplements and prescriptions have been extremely expensive and therefore available only to wealthy clients, but this may be changing soon. India has begun to distribute two generic versions of Acomplia/Rimnobant this year thanks to two of India’s largest pharmaceutical companies. One of the companies, Zydus Cadila, is a manufacturer of generic drugs and has begun to sell Acomplia in generic form under the name Slimona. Noting that the drug is already available to a wide variety of European and Latin American markets, the company claims that the more affordable version of Acomplia will be a great help to the country’s family physicians, cardiologists, and diabetologists eager to provide their overweight patients with economical means of weight loss. Obesity is a rapidly escalating problem in India and doctors are in need of new methods of
treating it. A week later, another Indian pharmaceutical company, Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd., announced that it would be selling its own generic version of Acomplia under the name Rimoslim. According to Torrent, their version of Acomplia has undergone clinical trials at the company’s research and development facility and that a trial conducted with over 200 patients showed positive results for weight loss.
According to Dr. Prasanna Kumar, a physician from Bangalor, average weight loss within several weeks during the trial was around 6 kilos, making the drug an excellent method of controlling obesity. The company’s vice-president, Ruchir Modi, states that the price per tablet for Rimoslim would be less than 20 cents US, reaffirming the belief that a generic version of Rimnobant would be most helpful to those patients unable to afford expensive brand-name drugs. Fixing the price of the drug would not only help to make it available to a wider range of clients, but also to pharmacists and doctors who would be able to stock and distribute larger quantities of the drug to more patients who need it.