“We have exercise in a pill,” said Ron Evans, an author of the study. “With no exercise, you can take a drug and chemically mimic it.”

Researchers say the discovery of the drug may be a step forward in the battle with obesity, diabetes and people with medical conditions that keep them from exercising.

Scientists discovered that young “marathon” adult mice that took a drug that can mimic the effects of exercise ran considerably farther compared with mice who only exercised.

The drugs reproduce many of the biological benefits of exercise, helping cells burn fat better and boosting endurance, said Ronald Evans, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California.

Scientists found that giving the mice one of two experimental drugs could significantly increase their endurance. Mice could run about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer than untreated mice. After a month of taking that drug and exercising, mice could run 68 percent longer and 70 percent farther than other mice that exercised but didn’t get the drug.

Ronald M. Evans, an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor at the Salk Institute's Gene Expression Laboratory and colleagues said that the most significant finding is that one can develop a pill that can confer the benefits of execise even though you can’t exercise.

“It’s basically the couch potato experiment, and it proves you can have a pharmacologic equivalent to exercise,” researchers said.

Scientists believe that both drugs – GW1516, which increased the running time by 68 percent and distance by 70 percent and AICAR, which increased running time by 23 percent and distance by 44 percent, but in “coach potato” mice – could be used to treat muscle wasting conditions, such as muscular dystrophy.

“It is highly likely that these drugs could have similar effects in humans,” researchers said. At this point, the drugs are not approved for human use.