NO TIME for the gym? No problem: Oral drugs may one day allow anyone to extend many of the benefits of exercise. As reported in the journal Cell, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California found that using drugs to simultaneously trigger two muscle-signalling pathways - usually activated by exercise - enhanced training and endurance in mice.
Professor Ronald M. Evans and his team found the drug GW1516 activated the "PPAR delta" pathway, resulting in improved resistance to weight gain and insulin response. When Coupled with training (four weeks of up to 50 minutes a day on a treadmill), endurance rose by 77 percent over exercise alone.
And after four weeks on another drug, AICAR - which triggers the "AMPK" pathway and, says Evans, "puts a turbocharge on PPAR delta" sedentary mice ran 44 percent longer than those not given the drug.
Researchers suggest these "exercise mimetic" drugs could be useful for conditions such as metabolic disorders, muscle diseases and obesity, for which exercise is beneficial.
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