Results from a pilot study: The effects of nicotinamide riboside on mild cognitive impairment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is a critical coenzyme in cellular metabolism. NAD(+) levels decrease with aging. Experimentally boosting NAD(+) improves cognitive function and synaptic plasticity in Alzheimer's disease mouse models. NAD(+) can be synthesized from dietary intake of its precursors, including nicotinamide riboside (NR), a readily available non‐prescription nutritional supplement. Recent studies have demonstrated that dietary NR increases blood NAD(+) levels in healthy older adults. We hypothesize that NR supplementation will positively affect brain function in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Method Phase 2 randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled trial with a 10‐week treatment period. Adults aged ≥65‐years‐old with a prior diagnosis of normal cognition [Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) score 26‐30] or MCI (MoCA score of 21‐25) participated at UT Health San Antonio. Dose escalation with NR over a 4‐week period was used to reach 1g/day, or maximum tolerated dose, for the final 6 weeks of the study. The primary outcomes were change from baseline on the MoCA and hippocampal blood flow as assessed by functional MRI (fMRI). Secondary outcomes included psychometric and frailty measures. Levels of blood NAD(+) and metabolites were determined at baseline and at the end of the study. Result Baseline levels of NAD(+) did not significantly differ between MCI and control groups (21.4 ± 0.75 versus 19.3 ± 2.04μM, mean ± SEM, MCI and control, respectively; p = 0.24). NR was well tolerated and significantly increased blood NAD(+), NAAD, and Me4PY (log2fold change: 1.2, 2.6, 3.3, respectively; p < 0.0001). NR treatment was associated with positive functional changes in the brain and frailty measures, but changes in cognitive measures were not observed. Conclusion A 10‐week supplementation of NR was well tolerated and significantly increased NAD(+) and associated metabolites in the blood of older adults with MCI. NR improved fMRI and physical function, our primary and secondary outcome measures, respectively. However, differences in cognition were not achieved in this small pilot study. Our results provide supporting evidence for further testing of NR as a method to maintain brain structure and function in older adults with MCI.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".