Bills which remove jet lag and bring manic depression under control could be developed when scientists found a drug that alters the body clock. The new drug could also tackle some types of obesity by resetting malfunctioning body clocks.

All these conditions can be caused by problems with what the biologists call our ‘circadian rhythms’ which determine not just sleep-wake cycles but also our metabolism. Recently a team of scientists from Britain and United States have found a drug which can slow down, kick start and reset the body clocks of mice.

This is done by altering a key enzyme which controls the process called casein kinase 1. Professor of animal biology at Manchester University, Andrew Loudon, said that previous research only dealt with the peripheral cogs of the clock.

He said, “Up until now we haven't had any drug that plays with the core clock itself.”

He described that this is a ‘trivial’ use in comparison to its other potential applications. With the use of the drug, they managed to reset the clock of the mice to an hour of their choosing. This led to the idea that the pill could away with jet lag.