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Research

What we now know about NMN and longevity — a review of human studies

NMN, a precursor of NAD+, has for years been one of the most hotly debated supplements in the biohacking community. We look at what the latest clinical trials in humans show, as distinct from earlier studies in mice.

MNMichał NowakAugust 11, 20267 min read
Table of contents

TL;DR — key takeaways

Why NMN generates so much interest in the first place

NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide) is a direct precursor of NAD+, a molecule essential for hundreds of enzymatic reactions in the cell, including energy production and DNA repair. NAD+ levels in tissue naturally decline with age, which led to the hypothesis that replenishing it through supplementation with precursors such as NMN could slow certain aging-related processes — a hypothesis tested for years mainly in mice, before it was finally subjected to more solid human studies.

What one of the first well-controlled human studies showed

The study by Yoshino and colleagues, published in Science, was one of the first rigorously controlled trials evaluating NMN supplementation specifically in postmenopausal women with prediabetes — a population of particular interest given the link between insulin resistance and age.

Nicotinamide mononucleotide increases muscle insulin sensitivity in prediabetic women

Moderate evidence

Yoshino M, Yoshino J, Kayser BD, et al. · Science · 2021

NMN supplementation for 10 weeks improved skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity in postmenopausal women with prediabetes, though it had no significant effect on body weight or other metabolic parameters measured.

View study

A second important study: effects on muscle function in older men

Another study, this time in older, healthy men, evaluated the effect of chronic NMN supplementation on blood NAD+ levels and muscle function — providing additional, though still preliminary, data on the potential benefits of this supplementation in a different demographic group.

Chronic nicotinamide mononucleotide supplementation elevates blood NAD+ levels and alters muscle function in healthy older men

Early-stage evidence

Igarashi M, Nakagawa-Nagahama Y, Miura M, et al. · npj Aging · 2022

Twelve weeks of NMN supplementation significantly raised blood NAD+ levels and was associated with improvement in some muscle function parameters in healthy older men, though the study had a relatively small sample size.

View study

What still remains unknown

A significant gap between mouse studies and human studies

Much of the spectacular longevity data that fueled NMN's popularity comes from mouse studies, where effects on lifespan are far easier to observe than in humans within realistically short clinical trials. No human study to date has measured, or could measure, a direct effect of NMN on lifespan.

What about nicotinamide riboside (NR) — an alternative NAD+ precursor

NMN isn't the only molecule tested as an NAD+ precursor — nicotinamide riboside (NR) is a different, chemically distinct substance leading to the same metabolic destination, and it's NR that has more and longer human safety studies behind it than NMN, partly because it entered clinical trials earlier.

Chronic nicotinamide riboside supplementation is well-tolerated and elevates NAD+ in healthy middle-aged and older adults

Moderate evidence

Martens CR, Denman BA, Mazzo MR, et al. · Nature Communications · 2018

Six weeks of NR supplementation was well tolerated and significantly raised blood NAD+ levels in healthy middle-aged and older adults, though the study showed no significant improvement in vascular function or blood pressure, which were the primary endpoints assessed.

View study

In practice, both precursors — NMN and NR — raise NAD+ levels, and direct head-to-head studies comparing them in the same participants are still lacking, so the choice between them today rests more on availability and price than on hard evidence of one being superior to the other.

Table: what we know, and what we still don't

AreaState of evidence
Raising blood NAD+ levelsWell documented across several studies
Muscle insulin sensitivityPreliminary, promising data in postmenopausal women
Muscle function in older adultsPreliminary data, small sample sizes
Direct effect on human lifespanNo data — impossible to study within a realistic time horizon

State of the evidence on NMN in humans

Our editorial recommendation

Available human studies are promising but still few in number and focus on indirect markers (NAD+, insulin sensitivity), not longevity directly. It's worth treating NMN as an area of active but still early research, rather than an established anti-aging intervention with proven effects on human lifespan.

I distinguish enthusiasm from evidence. There's no shortage of enthusiasm around NMN — evidence in humans, especially on hard endpoints like lifespan, is still very scarce.

Michał Nowak, VitMode editorial team

Frequently asked questions

There's no direct evidence for this — available clinical trials in humans assessed indirect markers, like NAD+ levels or insulin sensitivity, not lifespan directly, which is practically very difficult to study in humans.

Not always directly — effects observed in mice, especially on lifespan, require confirmation in human studies, which are much harder to carry out given longer lifespans and greater inter-individual variability.

Available short-term studies haven't shown significant adverse effects, but safety data on very long-term use in humans is still limited.

Sources

MN

Michał Nowak

MSc in Clinical Dietetics, certified sports-nutrition coach

Michał specializes in metabolic nutrition, intermittent fasting and sports supplementation.

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Related knowledge base entries

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Autophagy

An intracellular 'housekeeping' process that clears out damaged proteins and organelles, whose discovery earned a Nobel Prize — one of the key mechanisms studied in the context of slowing aging.

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Resveratrol

The red-grape polyphenol famed as a 'sirtuin activator' — but its bioavailability in humans is very low, which limits the practical relevance of many striking test-tube results.

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Comments (2)

  • KW

    Kasia W. 2 weeks ago

    Very clearly explained, especially the interactions section — I hadn't seen it laid out this well anywhere else.

  • MT

    Marek T. a month ago

    Are you planning to update this with the newest study from this year? I saw an interesting meta-analysis.