Every week, there seems to be another story about the health benefits of running. That's great--but what if you can't run? For the elderly, obese, or otherwise mobility-limited, the rewards of aerobic exercise have long been out of reach. Salk Institute scientists, building on earlier work that identified a gene pathway triggered by running, have discovered how to fully activate that pathway in sedentary mice with a chemical compound, mimicking the beneficial effects of exercise, including increased fat burning and stamina. The study, which appears in Cell Metabolism on May 2, 2017, not only deepens our understanding of aerobic endurance, but also offers people with heart conditions, pulmonary disease, type 2 diabetes, or other health limitations the hope of achieving those benefits pharmacologically. The open-access article is titled “PPARδ Promotes Running Endurance by Preserving Glucose.” "It's well known that people can improve their aerobic endurance through training," says senior author Ronald Evans, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and holder of Salk's March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology. "The question for us was: how does endurance work? And if we really understand the science, can we replace training with a drug?" Developing endurance means being able to sustain an aerobic activity for longer periods of time. As people become more fit, their muscles shift from burning carbohydrates (glucose) to burning fat.Login Or Register To Read Full Story