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NMN, Nicotine Riboside and current controversies

The last few days have been quite interesting in the supplements space. We had the FDA banning NMN and the reports that NR may encourage some forms of cancer.

FDA says ingredient studied as drug—β-NMN—is excluded from supplements is one of a number of stories which explain how the FDA have concluded that NMN is actually excluded.

It wasn't really so much a decision of the FDA actually to ban NMN as a supplement as a reinterpretation of the regulations that found that NMN should not be allowed as a dietary supplement.

At the same time we have had Study: Popular dietary supplement causes cancer risk, brain metastasis which is based upon A bioluminescent-based probe for in vivo non-invasive monitoring of nicotinamide riboside uptake reveals a link between metastasis and NAD+ metabolism.

The first one was not really something intentional, and may be changed by discussion and/or legal action. It also only has effect in the USA. The second one, however, is more serious and is likely to put the cat amongst the pigeons. In essence what it says is that if you increase NAD+ availability it can increase both the risk of certain cancers and make them more likely to metastise.

I am not entirely suprised by this report. I stopped taking NMN a few weeks ago because I was concerned that increasing the levels of NAD+ could power the dedifferentiation of cells which I am unsurprisingly wishing to avoid. That can also feed into the process of getting cancerous cells. The reason for this is that the Sirtuins remove acetylation from the histone and the level of this activity is NAD+ dependent.

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