According to Californian scientists, some laboratory mice were given a pill that made them gain the benefits of exercise. It is believed that the drug could have the same benefic effects on humans, said the study which has been published online on Thursday in the journal Cell.

The “breakthrough” pill seems to change the physical composition of the muscles, transforming the tissue from sugar-burning fast-twitch fibers to fat-burning slow-twitch ones. This means that couch-potatoes could lose weight only by taking the pill. No cycling, jogging or fitness is required.

GW1516, an experimental medicine created by GlaxoSmithKline Plc, altered the mice's skeletal muscle and increased their endurance levels by no less than 75 percent while the rodents also ran on a treadmill. The findings of the study disclosed that the small animals that had been given Aicar, a synthetic compound, enhanced their endurance by 44 percent after one month, even without working out.

"You're getting the benefits of exercise without having to do any work," asserted David Mangelsdorf, pharmacologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who wasn’t involved in the research.

Taking into account the fact that the research only involved mice, one can’t say anything about the pill’s safety and effectiveness on humans. "Mice are not men," said Michael Rennie, a physiologist at the University of Nottingham in England. "Rats and mice are much more metabolically unstable than human beings."

However, a great number of athletes and obese people who heard abut the research already showed interest in the drug. Lead researcher Ronald Evans, a molecular physiologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, said he had already been contacted by people wanting to buy the pill.