An "imaginary meal" pill has been developed by scientists to fight obesity.
The pill tricks the body into thinking it has consumed a large amount of calories, as if you have just eaten a substantial meal.
In early tests on mice it effectively halted weight gain, lowered cholesterol, controlled blood sugar and reduced levels of unhealthy white fat.
US lead scientist Dr Ronald Evans, director of the Salk Institute's Gene Expression Laboratory in La Jolla, California said: "This pill is like an imaginary meal.
"It sends out the same signals that normally happen when you eat a lot of food, so the body starts clearing out space to store it. But there are no calories and no change in appetite."
The drug, fexaramine, activates a protein that plays a role in how the body releases bile acids from the liver, digests food and stores fats and sugars.
Dr Evans compared fexaramine's effect in the intestine to the start of a relay race.
"The body's response to a meal is like a relay race, and if you tell all the runners to go at the same time, you'll never pass the baton," he said.
"We've learned how to trigger the first runner so that the rest of the events happen in a natural order."
Ideally the drug, would work in conjunction with diet and lifestyle changes to combat obesity, said the scientists, whose research is reported in the journal Nature Medicine.
