Benefit
Muscle Performance
Mitochondrial biogenesis and endurance.
Emerging human evidence
NR raised skeletal muscle NAD+ and shifted mitochondrial gene expression in aged men (Elhassan 2019). Performance effects in healthy younger athletes are less clear — most trials used aged or clinically compromised cohorts.
Key studies
Cell Reports · 2019 · PMID 31412242
Nicotinamide riboside augments the aged human skeletal muscle NAD+ metabolome
Elhassan YS, et al.
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Editorial note
NADFaq grades evidence on a 4-tier scale based on human trial quality, sample size, reproducibility, and mechanistic plausibility. This is a conservative framework — many published benefits of NAD+ precursors rest on preclinical (rodent or cell) work that has not yet translated to humans.
How we grade evidence