Abstract
The abundant health benefits of physical exercise are not being translated into practice. In an effort to short circuit the need for physical activity to promote health, exercise-mimetic agents are being developed; they mimic the action of peptide molecules released from exercised muscles. The intention is to mimic biochemi-cal responses even without performing exercise. Technologies have advanced to identify various exercise-induced proteins, called myokines, and to develop ligands which bind to the myokine receptors. A number of such chemicals exist that mimic the effects of activating Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ) coactivator 1α (PGC-1 α), Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor β/δ (PPAR β/δ) and AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Most such agents were test-ed in animal models with varying degrees of success and mostly undesirable ad-verse effects. The increasing complexity of exercise response is being recognized, making the development and use of single ‘exercise-mimetics’ ineffective, except for some narrow indications. In addition, some of the performance enhancing ex-ercise-mimetics are being misused by endurance athletes, with the chemicals be-ing banned as doping agents. In a fascinating interaction between physiology and pharmacology, agents that can mimic the beneficial effects of physical exercise are an enticing possibility over the distant horizon.
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