Sibutramine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Sibutramine is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Capsule
- Sold as
- Meridia
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every sibutramine product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Meridia.
Sibutramine and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for sibutramine: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadSibutramine is no longer marketed in the United States. Because there is no published experience with sibutramine during breastfeeding, an alternate therapy may be preferred, especially while nursing a newborn or preterm infant. Information on the effect of sibutramine on serum prolactin is somewhat conflicting.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised January 20, 2020. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about sibutramine
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 190 reports naming sibutramine, and the FDA flagged 93% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- weight decreased37 reports
- tachycardia19 reports
- headache18 reports
- suspected counterfeit product16 reports
- hypertension13 reports
- nausea13 reports
- palpitations13 reports
- asthenia11 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean sibutramine caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 26, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take sibutramine with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run sibutramine against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does sibutramine come in?
Across the brands we track, sibutramine is currently marketed as capsule, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic sibutramine?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled sibutramine product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Sibutramine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/sibutramine
- MLA
- “Sibutramine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/sibutramine.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for sibutramine on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.