NAD+-Precursor Supplementation With L-Tryptophan, Nicotinic Acid, and Nicotinamide Does Not Affect Mitochondrial Function or Skeletal Muscle Function in Physically Compromised Older Adults.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied NAD+ in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Boosting NAD+ via supplementation with niacin equivalents has been proposed as a potential modality capable of promoting healthy aging and negating age-dependent declines of skeletal muscle mass and function.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were older adults, both men and women.

A randomized, double-blind, controlled trial was conducted in 14 (female/male: 4/10) community-dwelling, older adults with impaired physical function [age, 72.9 ± 4.0 years; BMI, 25.2 ± 2.3 kg/m2].

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and double-blind.

Because people in this NAD+ study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on NAD+, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The primary outcomes tested were mitochondrial oxidative capacity and exercise efficiency, analyzed by means of paired Student's t-tests.

Secondary outcomes, such as NAD+ concentrations, were analyzed accordingly.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Dietary Supplements, Mitochondria, Muscle, Skeletal, NAD, Niacin, Niacinamide and Tryptophan.

The authors tagged it with the keywords NAD+-precursors, metabolism, mitochondrial function, muscle health, older adults and skeletal muscle.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of NAD+.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2021 (The Journal of nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: the NAD+ compound page, all human trials.