NAD-boosting treatment shows no Parkinson's benefit in yearlong trial

A major clinical trial involving 410 individuals with early Parkinson's disease found no clinical benefit from nicotinamide riboside (NR), a compound that increases cellular levels of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). Published in JAMA, the NOPARK trial led by professor Charalampos Tzoulis at Haukeland University Hospital and the University of Bergen tested NR in a large, rigorous phase 3 trial.

After one year, participants who received NR had worsened symptoms by an average of 2.45 points on the MDS-UPDRS scale, while the placebo group remained essentially unchanged. The adjusted difference was 2.72 points in favor of placebo, indicating that NR provided no clinical benefit in early Parkinson's disease. The study also found no evidence that NR slowed or accelerated changes in the brain's dopamine system, and the overall occurrence of adverse events was similar in both groups.

Researchers do not recommend that people with Parkinson's disease use NR or other NAD-boosting supplements outside controlled clinical studies, but they do not rule out the possibility of NAD-boosting treatments being beneficial in other diseases.

Brief written by urgent.news from Medical Xpress's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.