A randomized placebo-controlled trial of nicotinamide riboside in older adults with mild cognitive impairment

Orr ME, Kotkowski E, Ramirez P, Bair-Kelps D, Liu Q, Brenner C · GeroScience

Blood NAD+ rose 2.6-fold (p<0.001) with no excess adverse events. Cognition on the MoCA and every other neurocognitive measure was unchanged. Cerebral blood flow in the default mode network fell on NR (p=0.013), a finding the authors state would not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Walking speed improved in the placebo group across the study (p=0.0402), which they read as a practice effect, and did not change on NR (p=0.4698). Exploratory methylation analysis showed a modest reduction in epigenetic age by the PhenoAge and GrimAge clocks.

Population

Older adults with mild cognitive impairment

Intervention

Nicotinamide riboside escalated to 1,000 mg/day for 10 weeks

Comparator

Placebo

Limitations

Twenty participants, ten weeks, explicitly a pilot. The epigenetic-age result is exploratory and uncorrected.