Fatigue No More?

This is a nice example of how science sometimes works:

For decades, muscle fatigue had been largely ignored or misunderstood. Leading physiology textbooks did not even try to offer a mechanism, said Dr. Andrew Marks, principal investigator of the new study. A popular theory, that muscles become tired because they release lactic acid, was discredited not long ago.
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The new work in mice, Dr. Brooks said, “is exciting and provocative.” It is a finding that came unexpectedly from a very different line of research. Dr. Marks, a cardiologist, wanted to discover better ways to treat people with congestive heart failure, a chronic and debilitating condition that affects an estimated 4.8 million Americans.
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But eventually the epinephrine and norepinephrine cannot stimulate the heart enough to meet the demands for blood. The brain responds by releasing more and more of those fight or flight hormones until it is releasing them all the time. At that point, the calcium channels in heart muscle are overstimulated and start to leak.

When they understood the mechanisms, the researchers developed a class of experimental drugs that block the leaks in calcium channels in the heart muscle. The drugs were originally created to block cells’ calcium channels, a way of lowering blood pressure.
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So he and his colleagues looked at making mice exercise to exhaustion, swimming and then running on a treadmill. The calcium channels in their skeletal muscles became leaky, the investigators found. And when they gave the mice their experimental drug, the animals could run 10 to 20 percent longer.

and they found the same was true in humans–that when muscles become tired they leak calcium (they haven’t tried the drug on humans yet). I’m not sure exactly what this gets us–we still will become fatigued (yeah, my headline is a bit of hyperbole) and I’m not sure how much this will help for people in general (will the ability to exercise for longer get us in shape quicker or would it be dangerous). I do know that very shortly (if it’s at all shown to work) this will show up in athletes–many teens have shown a high willingness to use a drug if it gives them a leg up, even if it shaves many years off their life and how could this not give an athlete a leg up?

Oh right, the point of this post was supposed to be about the serendipity of science–how research into one field can help to explain how something works in another field. This is one of the reasons basic research is so important–this could easily have happened in reverse, a search for the reason for muscle fatigue could have led to better treatment for congestive heart failure.