Tier 4 — mechanistic

Boosting NAD level suppresses inflammatory activation of PBMCs in heart failure

Zhou B, Wang DD, Qiu Y, Airhart S, Liu Y, Stempien-Otero A, O'Brien KD, Tian R

The Journal of clinical investigation 2020 130; 11; 6054-6063

Bibliography

PubMed: PMID 32790648
PubMed Central: PMC7598081
DOI: 10.1172/jci138538
Funding: Indexed grant support includes NHLBI NIH HHS, BLRD VA. The complete funding declaration is not specified in the accessible abstract.
Competing interests: The authors reported no competing interests.

Design	Human observational and cell study with open-label NR substudy
Model	Human patients, healthy donors and cultured blood cells
Sample	19 heart-failure and 19 healthy donors; 4 patients received oral NR
Intervention	Oral NR in a small clinical substudy, with separate PBMC experiments
Duration	5–9 days in the treatment substudy
Endpoints	PBMC respiration; inflammatory gene expression

NR exposure was associated with improved immune-cell respiration and lower inflammatory gene expression in four people with advanced heart failure.

NR exposure was associated with improved immune-cell respiration and lower inflammatory gene expression in four people with advanced heart failure.

Most findings are mechanistic or observational; the four-person treatment component cannot establish heart-failure efficacy.

Editorial review

Last verified 22 October 2026