'Fit pill' boosts sports performance
Friday, 01 Aug 2008 12:09
Researchers say the 'fit pill' tricks muscles into thinking they have been exercised
A 'fit pill' has been developed by scientists that boosts muscles and improves endurance without the need to do any exercise.
The treatment tricks muscles into believing they have been exercised daily and has been described by one of the researchers as the "pharmacologic equivalent to exercise".
Earlier studies by the team at the Salk Institute found that they could genetically engineer mice to become 'marathon mice' by increasing activity of a gene in muscle called PPARd.
For the latest research they gave a drug known as GW1516, which increases the activity of PPARd, to mice that were undergoing exercise training.
After four weeks of exercise combined with the drug, the animals' running time increased by 68 per cent and their running distance by 70 per cent compared to mice given a placebo.
The muscles of the drug-treated mice also showed a unique 'endurance gene signature'.
The researchers then gave the mice a chemical known as AICAR, which is known to act on a protein called AMPK, as they suspected this could be the link between exercise and PPARd.
Even in inactive mice, four weeks of AICAR treatment enhanced running endurance by 44 per cent and induced metabolic performance.
"In this study, we revealed that synthetic PPARd activation and exercise, or more importantly AMPK activation alone, provides a robust transcriptional cue that re-programs the skeletal muscle genome and dramatically enhances endurance," the researchers conclude in the journal Cell.
"We believe that the strategy of re-organising the preset genetic imprint of muscle (as well as other tissues) using exercise mimetic drugs has therapeutic potential in treating certain muscle diseases such as wasting and frailty as well as obesity where exercise is known to be beneficial."
Given the potential for abuse by athletes, researcher Ronald Evans said his group has already spoken to the World Anti-Doping Agency and is developing a test aimed at detecting use of the PPARd-boosting drug.
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