Topical niacinamide (Nicotinamide) treatment for discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE): A prospective pilot study.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at NAD+ in the context of lupus (sle).

Current therapies of DLE are challenging and not completely satisfactory, highly expensive, off-label, or poorly available (like antimalarials due to COVID-19 outbreaks).

Nicotinamide, also called niacinamide, is a water-soluble form of vitamin B3 (niacin).

Its multiple effects let them think that nicotinamide could be a therapy for lupus-associated skin lesions.

Why It Was Studied

Cutaneous lupus erythematosus is an umbrella term for a group of autoimmune connective tissue disorders affecting the skin.

Discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE) is the chronic condition and most common form of cutaneous lupus erythematosus.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 60 subjects were involved.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and pilot 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.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger NAD+ study would be practical.

Control group was included using only cream/gel base as placebo control.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Pilot Projects, Niacinamide, COVID-19, Lupus Erythematosus, Discoid and Lupus Erythematosus, Cutaneous.

Author keywords: cutaneous lupus, nicotinamide and topical treatment.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of NAD+ in 60 subjects in people with lupus (sle).

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2023 (Journal of cosmetic dermatology), a journal based in England.

More context: the NAD+ compound page, Lupus (SLE) research.