Age‐dependent decline of NAD+ - universal truth or confounded consensus?

A. Augusto Peluso, Mads V. Damgaard, Marcelo A.S. Mori, Jonas T. Treebak*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReviewResearchpeer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)
34 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is an essential molecule involved in various metabolic reactions, acting as an electron donor in the electron transport chain and as a co‐factor for NAD+ ‐dependent enzymes. In the early 2000s, reports that NAD+ declines with aging introduced the notion that NAD+ metabolism is globally and progressively impaired with age. Since then, NAD+ became an attractive target for potential pharmacological therapies aiming to increase NAD+ levels to promote vitality and protect against age‐related diseases. This review summarizes and discusses a collection of studies that report the levels of NAD+ with aging in different species (i.e., yeast, C. elegans, rat, mouse, monkey, and human), to determine whether the notion that overall NAD+ levels decrease with aging stands true. We find that, despite systematic claims of overall changes in NAD+ levels with aging, the evidence to support such claims is very limited and often restricted to a single tissue or cell type. This is particularly true in humans, where the development of NAD+ levels during aging is still poorly characterized. There is a need for much larger, preferably longitudinal, studies to assess how NAD+ levels develop with aging in various tissues. This will strengthen our conclusions on NAD metabolism during aging and should provide a foundation for better pharmacological targeting of relevant tissues.

Original languageEnglish
Article number101
JournalNutrients
Volume14
Issue number1
ISSN2072-6643
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Keywords

  • Aging
  • C. elegans
  • Human
  • Monkey
  • Mouse
  • NAD
  • Rat
  • Yeast

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