Exercise in a Bottle: Drugs May Mimic Benefits of Exercising

Still, having discovered that exercise correlates with about 1,000 molecular reactions in our muscles, the University of Sydney research team and their colleagues at the University of Copenhagen have a much better idea of what these drugs should be engineered to do.

The findings are important for developing drugs that may mimic exercise. “It plays an essential role in controlling energy metabolism and insulin sensitivity”, said Nolan Hoffman, co-author of the new study. “Taken together, this suggests that AICAR is capable of mimicking a broad spectrum of exercise-like adaptation in skeletal muscle”. The drug would also just deliver the benefits of exercise for muscles, but not for the mind. More recently, it was found the drug activates a form of the hormone receptor PPAR, which triggers physiological properties often seen in response to exercise. But a review of current development efforts, publishing October 2 in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, ponders whether such pills will achieve their potential therapeutic impact, at least in the near future. Developed by researchers from the UK’s University of Southampton, the drug works by blocking an enzyme called ATIC, which, in turn, activates the all-important AMPK protein.

He explained that exercise is crucial for lessening the risks of certain diseases and cancers but for a few people it was not a practical option.

“Exercise pills are still at the starting line and have a long road ahead before they gain clinical application”. More research is needed to determine their safety and efficacy, as well as the possibility for misuse – in athletes, for example. With this exercise blueprint, though, researchers have proven that any drug that mimics exercise needs to target multiple molecules and possibly even pathways.

Two and a half hours of moderate intensity exercise each week.

Of course, the pill won’t be aimed at lazy people. “In such patients, a large number of detrimental changes occur in cardiovascular and skeletal muscle function”. The study concludes that it is unrealistic to expect that all of the benefits of exercise like improved cognitive function, increased bone strength, or improved cardiac function will be possible with any exercise pill presently in development.