ChromaDex announced yesterday at an earnings report call that the long awaited University of Colorado human study of NR will be published very “soon.” We don’t know if “soon” means sometime before the Tokyo Summer Olympics or within a few weeks.
Safety & Efficacy of Nicotinamide Riboside Supplementation for Improving Physiological Function in Middle-Aged and Older Adults studied the effects of taking 250 mg, 500 mg, and 1000 mg of NR on liver enzymes and kidney function along with artery flow dilation, aortic pulse wave velocity, cognitive and motor function. 30 people participated in the 6-week trial last fall and the results were discussed in a closed forum this past summer.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02921659?term=nicotinamide+riboside&rank=2
The Whims of Change 
Hmmm
Given that ChromaDex has been sitting on this all important study for more than a year now, I think it is safe to assume its results do not bode well for Niagen, or their bottom line……
Obviously if the study was positive management would have been crowing about it in one way, shape form or another, from the roof tops literally the day it was completed. Nonsense about waiting for review etc., are just that, nonsense. Under the circumstances, at best on can reasonably infer that management refusing to release the results more than a year after its completion means they have been forced into damage control. At best………
Given that Niagen is being used by thousands of people based on company claims (inferred, implied and/or explicitly stated by ChromaDex and/or its resellers) that this study was designed to help verify, clearly the public has a vested interest in the results. Which makes ChromaDex stonewalling on its release very troubling.
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DD, valid worries.
However, if the outcome is negative then why is Chromadex refocusing their business almost exclusively around NR?
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Hmmm
They have no choice, Niagen is all they have left. Clearly they are going to milk it down to the last drop. There simply isn’t anything else left in their portfolio of any real value. It is now nearly 6 weeks further down the road and they still are refusing to publish the study. Like politicians everywhere, corporations must be judged upon what they actually do rather than what is said….
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One thing out of many that has interested me about the business side of NR is that Elysium also refused to publish their results online before it was published in one of the Nature periodicals.
Elysium (Leonard Guarente) announced last summer that it is also preparing six more trials to focus on conditions and dosages. I think NR shows real promise but maybe not as much as hoped, especially at the recommended amount of only 250 mg a day, potentially forcing both companies to reconsider marketing at higher prices.
At any rate, it looks like the Colorado study will be out “soon.”
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I’m not an expert, but I think it’s related to submission policies for academic journals–which have their own fickle timelines for approval. If you want it published in a certain journal, you cannot bandy about the results too much beforehand.
One of the secondary outcome measures of the study ( https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02921659?term=nicotinamide+riboside&rank=2 ) was arterial stiffness. I see this ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1872931217301011 ) in another paper, which is presumably from the same data, and a good sign. The researchers also seem to have more NR coming down their pipeline.
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Hmmm
Taken at face value your explanation for the delay sounds plausible. Unfortunately, the process which you are referring to normally takes a matter of weeks, a few months at the most. Time from completion to time of publication certainly does not take years. You then go on to contradict your own explanation by providing links to published data drawn from the study. Such cherry picking offers more evidence that the study, when taken in total, presented a negative outcome for Niagen……. As a publicly traded company Niagen has a fiduciary responsibility of disclosure to its stock holders. And that disclosure includes bad news……..
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Brenner’s original NR study took 9 months from submission to publication. Not sure why you’re convinced the larger trial would go sooner.
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Hmmm
9 months is a long time. At this rate, if it gets published, and that is still a big if, it will be nearly a year after the completion date. My criticism and skepticism regarding Chromadex and clinical trial results still stands. The fact that Chromodex appears to have been directly involved in most of these studies also raises the question of bias and independence of the researchers…..
What about the following study? ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02921659. Title: Safety & Efficacy of Nicotinamide Riboside Supplementation for Improving Physiological Function in Middle-Aged and Older Adults. ” Completed in October 2016, the data and results were never published.
This was a study which specifically and directly measured the effectiveness of many of the primary claims made in marketing Niagen to the public. Straight from the clinicaltrials.gov website: “The purpose of this study is to assess the efficacy of supplementation with the Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD+) precursor compound, Nicotinamide Riboside (NR), for improving physiological function (vascular, motor, and cognitive) in healthy middle-aged and older adults.”
The facts currently in the public domain could be deceiving. I could be all wrong here. Maybe, Chromadex hasn’t been intentionally limiting, delaying, cherry picking, and/or burying negative clinical studies of Niagen to protect sales. I mean its not like the industry has been caught doing exactly that so many times it is difficult to keep count. Oh, wait………..
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DD,
It’s a normal timeline. You can argue that it shouldn’t be ( https://www.nature.com/news/does-it-take-too-long-to-publish-research-1.19320 ). Keep in mind it would not even have been submitted until months after conclusion of the trials.
It’s also normal for those with a financial stake to fund studies. You can argue that it shouldn’t be, but that’s just how it is across many industries. You have a valid concern but are arguing against “the system” rather than Chromadex.
Will the data be cherry-picked? Report results that are only barely statistically significant? Certainly possible. It could be difficult to prove anything in a short-term trial. Many aspects of nutrition, exercise, health are still debated even after many decades. Niagen will probably not be proven to be a magic elixer nor debunked as mere overpriced niacin.
I suppose I should disclose, if it’s not evident, that I’m a shareholder.
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“What about the following study? ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02921659. Title: Safety & Efficacy of Nicotinamide Riboside Supplementation for Improving Physiological Function in Middle-Aged and Older Adults. ” Completed in October 2016, the data and results were never published.”
…That’s the very study we’re discussing.
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Results usually take over a year to be published.
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