August 1, 2008
By Nicholas Wade
From The International Herald Tribune
Can you enjoy the benefits of exercise without the pain of exertion? The answer may one day be yes - just take a pill that tricks the muscles into thinking they have been working out furiously.
Researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego report that they have found two drugs that do wonders for the athletic endurance of couch potato mice.
One drug, Aicar, increased the mice's endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment. The second drug, GW1516, supercharged the mice to a 75 percent increase in endurance, but had to be combined with exercise to have any effect.
''It's a little bit like a free lunch without the calories,'' said Dr. Ronald Evans, leader of the Salk group.
The results, Evans said, seem reasonably likely to apply to people, who control muscle tone with the same underlying genes as do mice. And if the drugs work and prove to be safe, they could be useful in a wide range of settings.
They should help people who are too frail to exercise and those with health problems like diabetes that are improved with exercise, he said.
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