Nicotinamide riboside as a neuroprotective therapy for glaucoma: study protocol for a randomized, double-blind, placebo-control trial

What Was Tested

This clinical study looks at NAD+.

The researchers hypothesize that patients treated with NR have a slower rate of progressive retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thinning compared with those treated with placebo.

Chinese Clinical Trial Registry 1900021998.

Who Took Part

The study group was 125 patients.

This is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, multi-center study including 125 patients with POAG.

The rates of RNFL thinning and VF sensitivity decline between treatment groups will be compared with linear mixed modeling.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter and parallel-group study.

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.

As a double-blind NAD+ study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the NAD+ group a baseline to be compared against.

Running at several centres spread the NAD+ study over different clinics and patient groups.

Clinical examination, optical coherence tomography imaging of the RNFL, and visual field (VF) test will be performed at the baseline, 1 month, 4 months, and then at 2-month intervals until 24 months.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Glaucoma, Glaucoma, Open-Angle, Nerve Fibers, Neuroprotection, Niacinamide, Pyridinium Compounds and Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic.

Author keywords: Nicotinamide riboside, Optical coherence tomography, Progressive retinal nerve fiber layer thinning, Retinal nerve fiber layer and Visual field.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of NAD+ in 125 patients.

Its findings take up roughly 2 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2022 (Trials), a journal based in England.

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