Well, here's the question-and-answer about the new diet pill Acomplia (rimonabant) that thousands of you probably have been waiting for.

We all know by now that Acomplia depresses the appetite of obese and overweight people by blocking cannabinoid receptors found in the brain -- the same receptors that stimulate feelings of hunger when people ingest THC, the main psychoactive component of marijuana.

So, if people who occasionally (or perhaps more than occasionally) smoke a joint also take Acomplia, will the THC in pot, which activates the cannabioid receptors, or the rimonabant, which blocks the cannibinoid receptors, win out?

Fred Gardner, editor of O'Shaughnessy's Journal of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group, reports he was at the annual meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society in late June when this question was put to a representative of Sanofi-Aventis, developer of Acomplia.

(Sanofi, incidentally, was the lead financial sponsor of this year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, held at Club Tihany, a resort on the shores of Hungary's Lake Balaton -- but big pharma contributions to "independent" medical research societies is a whole different issue.)

Gardner reports in the July 8-9 edition of the political newsletter CounterPunch that Sanofi apparently had never studied the possible interaction of marijuana and rimonabant.

"If this drug becomes the blockbuster they anticipate, we are going to be seeing many, many patients who use cannabis for, say, chronic pain (cough, cough - editor) and take rimonabant to lose weight," said Dr. R. Stephen Ellis of California, who posed the question to Sanofi researchers at the meeting.

"Will the beneficial effects (of Acomplia) be negated? Will they (patients) require different dosages? Probably -- because there will be two molecules, THC and rimonabant, competing for the same receptor sites," Ellis said.

While this may strike some as a frivolous issue, it may well ultimately affect large numbers of potential Acomplia users, and other researchers wonder whether it is indeed possible that Sanofi never thought to address this issue.

Our guess is that the question of what happens to overweight marijuana users who take Acomplia -- who then have two drugs competing for the same receptors in their brains -- is likely to get additional attention as the FDA continues consideration of this novel medication.

http://www.acompliareport.com/News/news-070906.htm