French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA said it is putting an end to all clinical trials of Acomplia, a drug aimed at fighting against obesity.

“It's over,” the company’s spokesman Jean Marc Podvin said in an interview, referring to Acomplia, a drug that works by blocking receptors in the brain that help control food intake.

On Wednesday, the pharmaceutical company, the world's No. 4 drugmaker, announced it is discontinuing all human testing of the weight-loss drug Acomplia. Sanofi-Aventis’s clinical development program involved an estimated 24,000 patients, the company said.

In Europe, Acomplia was initially approved for sale in 2006 as a treatment for obesity. However, there have been progressively issued strong warnings on its side effects. In the Unites States, the drug has tackled serious problems with the Food and Drug Administration. Health regulators didn’t approve the drug for sale as a result of people voicing concern about adverse events, depression and suicidal thinking counting among them.

A couple of weeks ago, the Paris-based company said it decided to suspend sales of Acomplia in the European continent. The decision came after the European Medicines Agency, the agency responsible for the evaluation of medicinal products marketed in Europe, recommended the suspension of sales, claiming the risks it poses are greater and more numerous than its health benefits.

As stated by Acomplia’s manufacturer, over 700,000 overweight and obese people worldwide have been treated with the weight-loss drug, thus gaining considerable health benefits.