‘No-workout’ drug may help couch potatoes exercise without sweating

Someday, researchers say, such a drug might help treat obesity, diabetes and people with medical conditions that keep them from exercising.

“We have exercise in a pill,” said Ron Evans, an author of the study. “With no exercise, you can take a drug and chemically mimic it.”

Evans, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute reports the work with colleagues in a paper published online Thursday by the journal Cell.

They also report that in mice that did exercise training, a second drug made their workout much more effective at boosting endurance. After a month of taking that drug and exercising, mice could run 68 per cent longer and 70 per cent farther than other mice that exercised but didn’t get the drug.

The drug is in advanced human testing to see if it can prevent a complication of heart bypass surgery.

Evans noted the drugs might prove irresistible for professional athletes who seek an illegal edge. He said his team has developed detection tests for use by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Evans said he has no financial interest in either drug or the test.

Resveratrol, a substance being studied for anti-aging effects, has also been reported to enable mice to run farther before exhaustion without exercise training. But the drugs in the new study appear to act more specifically on a process in muscles that boosts endurance, the researchers said.

Still, it takes more than just altered muscles to turn a sedentary mouse into a distance runner, Evans said, and “honestly, I just don’t know how that happens. Whether it would happen in a person, I don’t know. I think it’s a small miracle it happened at all”.

Evans said that when the experiment with sedentary mice was suggested by an outside scientist, “I didn’t think it was going to work”.

The no-exercise drug is called AICAR. Previous experiments suggest that it might protect against gaining weight on a high-fat diet, which might make it useful for treating obesity, Evans said.

But it would have to be taken for a long time, he said, so its safety in people would have to be assured. Experts, who study muscle agreed that a drug like AICAR may prove useful someday in treating obesity and diabetes. People who can’t exercise because of a medical condition like joint pain or heart failure might also benefit from such a drug,experts said.