Tier 2 — strong

Investigation of short and intermediate term effects of a supplement mix designed to target ageing mechanisms on vascular function in healthy middle-aged participants (STAMINA Study)

Heiss C, Sampson D, Bapir M, Piercy C, Sackho K
ClinicalTrials.gov trial registry record and University of Surrey study protocol V5.0 2024 Protocol version 5.0, 23 February 2024; internal reference STAMINA_Protocol_V4.0

Bibliography

DOI
10.2139/ssrn.6241278
Trial registry
View on ClinicalTrials.gov Registered trial — results not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Funding
Verbatim from the protocol funding table: funder "AgeLessSciences, a Public Benefit Corporation, Kris Verburgh, PhD CEO"; financial and non-financial support given: "Charitable donation to Prof. Heiss plus provision of supplement and placebo".
Competing interests
The manufacturer of the tested product funded the study through a charitable donation to the chief investigator and supplied both the active product and the placebo. The sponsor of record is the University of Surrey and the investigators are academic staff, but the funding relationship with the product manufacturer is direct and must be disclosed alongside any result.

Study snapshot

DesignRandomised, double-blind (quadruple-masked), placebo-controlled, parallel-group intervention study with an acute phase and a six-month intermediate phase. Two participant visits: measurements before and two hours after the first dose, then repeated at the final visit.
ModelHealthy middle-aged adults, all sexes, adult and older adult age groups. Single site: University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, United Kingdom.
SamplePlanned 60 (30 supplement, 30 placebo); 61 randomised; 43 completers.
InterventionDaily NOVOS Core supplement or matched placebo for up to six months, both provided by AgeLess Sciences LLC. Participants received two phone calls during the study to support compliance.
DurationAcute two-hour post-dose assessment on day one, then daily supplementation for six months with vascular exams and one blood draw repeated at the final visit.
EndpointsPrimary: change in flow-mediated dilation measured by ultrasound (percent) at 6 months; Secondary: change in systolic and diastolic blood pressure (mmHg); Secondary: change in total, LDL and HDL cholesterol (mmol/L); Secondary: change in arterial stiffness measured as pulse wave velocity (m/s); Secondary: change in daily walking distance measured by personal smartphone; Secondary: change in calculated 10-year cardiovascular risk (ESC SCORE); Tertiary: changes in blood biomarkers of ageing including DNA damage

What the study showed, in plain terms

STAMINA is the reason NOVOS Core sits at the top of the completed-evidence column in this category, and it is worth understanding in detail because almost nothing else in the consumer longevity market has been tested this way.

A cardiovascular medicine group at the University of Surrey registered the trial before it began, randomised 61 healthy middle-aged adults to the commercial NOVOS Core formula or a matching placebo, and masked everyone involved — participants, care providers, investigators and the people reading the outcomes. Participants took the product daily for six months. The prespecified primary endpoint was flow-mediated dilation, an ultrasound measure of how well the lining of an artery responds; secondary endpoints covered blood pressure, cholesterol, arterial stiffness, ten-year cardiovascular risk and daily walking distance.

That design is genuinely rigorous. Registering the endpoint in advance means the sponsor could not choose afterwards which measure to report, which is the failure mode most consumer supplement research suffers from.

Three things keep it short of definitive. Only 43 of the 61 randomised participants completed, an attrition rate of 29.5 percent, which is high enough that how the missing data were handled materially affects the result. The endpoints are vascular surrogates, not lifespan, heart attacks or strokes. And the product manufacturer, AgeLess Sciences, funded the study through a charitable donation to the chief investigator and supplied both the active product and the placebo — an arrangement the protocol discloses openly, and one that does not invalidate an academically run masked trial, but which belongs beside the headline.

There is also a version problem the reader should carry. The protocol describes a 13-component supplement, while the supplied retail label and the trial formulation differ on serving size, malate content and ginger content. A result belongs to the product that was tested, not to a differently formulated retail version of it.

Key findings

  • The 2026 results preprint reports placebo-adjusted improvement in flow-mediated dilation of 2.9 percentage points after six months.
  • Placebo-adjusted improvement in pulse wave velocity of 1.18 m/s, indicating reduced arterial stiffness.
  • Placebo-adjusted reduction in peripheral systolic blood pressure of 6.1 mmHg.
  • Lipids were unchanged.
  • 61 participants were randomised against a planned 60; 43 completed, giving observed attrition of 29.5 percent.
  • The trial was registered before enrolment as NCT06145087 with a single prespecified primary endpoint, and used quadruple masking.
  • At the 10 September 2026 research cutoff the manuscript remained a preprint and had not completed journal peer review.

What this study can and cannot tell us

Results were a preprint at the research cutoff. A preprint has not been through journal peer review, so the effect estimates, the statistical handling and the conclusions have not yet been independently scrutinised in the way a published paper has.

Attrition of 29.5 percent is high for a six-month trial. With 18 of 61 randomised participants not completing, the treatment of missing data becomes a substantive analytical choice rather than a technicality, and it affects both generalisability and the risk of bias.

Flow-mediated dilation, pulse wave velocity and blood pressure are surrogate biomarkers of vascular function. Improvements in them are decision-relevant and better than no product-level evidence at all, but they are not cardiovascular events, disease outcomes or lifespan.

The retail product and the trial formulation do not match on serving size, malate and ginger content, and the retail badge reviewed says erythritol-free while the protocol excipient description included erythritol. The result should be attributed to the formulation actually administered.

The product manufacturer funded the trial via a charitable donation to the chief investigator and supplied the active product and placebo. The academic sponsorship, prospective registration and quadruple masking are real mitigations; the funding relationship still requires disclosure wherever the result is quoted.

Single-site, single-country, healthy middle-aged participants. The result does not transfer automatically to older adults, to people with cardiovascular disease, or to those on antihypertensive treatment.

Editorial review

Reviewed by the Biohack Blueprint research team

Last verified

Dr. Khaled Mahmoud, MBBChCritical Care Medicine, Longevity Science & Editorial Direction Dr. Amr Yasser, PhDCardiometabolic, Musculoskeletal, Gut & Bioavailability Dr. Abdulla Mostafa, PhDCellular Senescence, Neurological, Mitochondrial & Brain-Ageing Biology