The Niagen controversy

Abstract

Take your vitamins. That advice isn’t just old fashioned these days; it’s downright controversial. Study after study shows that most people with a decent diet do not benefit from taking vitamins. But plenty of people still take vitamins and other nutritional supplements. Serving those consumers is big business: Supplement sales reached $41 billion in 2016 worldwide, up 6% from 2015, according to Nutrition Business Journal. With little regulation of the field in the U.S., it’s common for supplement makers’ fortunes to grow and shrink depending on headlines about new research, even though many such findings are based on weak evidence. Amid the hum of controversy around supplements, the battle over nicotinamide riboside, called NR for short, stands out. A humble molecule found in milk, NR is the subject of a grueling patent dispute plus accusations of theft, stolen trade secrets, and employee poaching. It’s also the promising subject of several