In brief
This review covers what was known in 2018 about nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide, the two intermediates most used to raise NAD⁺. Supplementing either had shown preventive and therapeutic effects against age-associated changes and disease conditions in preclinical models. The authors stress that the pharmacokinetics and metabolic fates of the two molecules were still being worked out, that they can behave differently, and that what happens to each seems to depend on the tissue distribution of NAD⁺ biosynthetic enzymes, nucleotidases and presumptive transporters. They describe a framework linking NAD⁺ metabolism to the control of ageing and longevity in mammals, and say the stage is set to test whether the preclinical results translate to human health.
Study design
Cell Metabolism review of the two NAD⁺ precursors nicotinamide riboside and nicotinamide mononucleotide.
What it does not show
A review of precursor molecules, mostly in animals. The vial sold on this site is NAD⁺ itself, not NR or NMN, and the review is explicit that human translation was untested at the time.
A review summarises other papers and inherits every limit of the work it cites. It adds no new experiment, and where a review is written by the group that developed the compound, the selection of what to include is theirs.
Where this paper is cited
- NAD+ — Review of the NAD+ precursors NMN and NR: uptake, metabolism and the animal evidence.
Other papers cited for NAD+
- Review NAD+ metabolism and its roles in cellular processes during ageing Covarrubias et al. (2021), Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol
- Review Therapeutic Potential of NAD-Boosting Molecules: The In Vivo Evidence Rajman et al. (2018), Cell Metab
Further reading
- Research library: every paper cited on this site, by compound and by study type.
- Cognitive and longevity peptide comparison
- How to read a certificate of analysis
- Lyophilised peptide storage and stability
How this page was made: the citation was retrieved from PubMed by PMID and checked against the title on the product page; the summary was written from the paper's abstract and reports only what the abstract reports. Read the paper itself before relying on any figure here.