Major NYT Article On COVID-19 Cytokine Storms Omits NAD Connection

This week’s New York Times Magazine suggests that “many Covid-19 patients may be dying from their immune response to the virus, NOT from the virus itself.” COVID-19 patients’ immune overreaction is known as a “Cytokine Storm”. What’s the NAD connection? Harvard’s David Sinclair and City of Hope’s Charles Brenner agree — “cytokine storms” are the result of depleted NAD. And thus it’s plausible that NAD boosters could help.

Cytokine Storm (New York Times Magazine):

“She (Dr Navarro-Millán) suspected that the greatest danger here wasn’t the coronavirus itself but an immune overreaction so severe that it could cause lungs to fill up with fluid and prompt organs to shut down, possibly killing the patient. Rheumatologists often describe this type of immune reaction as a “cytokine storm” or “cytokine release syndrome.”

“…To save her patient, Navarro-Millán decided that she would have to calm his immune system and prevent that storm from getting started.”

Harvard’s David Sinclair on NAD and Cytokine Storms (Kahn Academy):

“…So we’ve had a study in my lab for the last few years that shows that NAD depletion occurs, a lack of NAD occurs when there’s an infection.

That’s one bit of evidence.

But then there was another study, Charlie Brenner, a professor showed that patient samples actually have low NAD if they have bad COVID infection.

And then there are some case studies coming out of Cedars Sinai Hospital with patients that did remarkably well given an NAD booster cocktail.

So, all of that led me to look more and more into it.

And it turns out that my lab, and now Charlie’s lab has also shown that the virus is depleting NAD in the body. It does that for reasons we’re not really sure. But it might be part of the pathogenesis, as we call it, part of the problem the virus causes.

And so the hope, we’re testing this now, hopefully soon in patients, is that by getting that NAD depletion back up to normal that elderly people will have the energy and the immune system to be able to fight the virus.

And there’s another thing that’s interesting is that hyper inflammation where these severe cases actually succumb to over-inflammation, or the cytokine storm, that we know that if you have less NAD you get this hyperactivation.

And so, there’s another possibility that NAD boosting could actually help people with a very extreme late stage form of COVID-19.

City of Hope’s Charles Brenner on NAD and Cytokine Storms (Precisione: The Healthcast):

“…Our primary interest and our first publication in the coronavirus realm relates to building defense against the initial infection and the initial establishment of the disease. So it would be more of a preventative strategy.

There’s potentially uses of Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) in COVID-19 treatment as well because there’s evidence from small clinical trials that healthy older people given high doses of Niagen (NR) have lower levels of inflammatory markers — and as you know the cytokine storm is a component of COVID-19 disease.

Chromadex (NAD booster company) on their Q2 Earnings Call (8/6/20):

“In April, we announced the first round of results from a combination tissue and in-vitro study on COVID-19. As a reminder, there were two key findings from this preclinical study. First the COVID-19 introduction to the studied cells caused an 80% reduction in NAD. And second, these infected cells specifically sought out Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) in an attempt to replenish NAD levels in the face of the viral infection.

“…In response to your question on the Fauci lab, they saw the initial data that was published on BioRxiv that showed that there was an 80% decline in NAD when the Coronavirus attached to the cell. And they found that very interesting. Obviously, they’re particularly interested in the cytokine storm and how the reduction in IL-6 inflammation marker might impact cytokine storm.”

NOTE:

• More on NAD and COVID-19 HERE.
• FAQs on taking NAD boosting vitamin supplement Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) can be found HERE.
• NR supplementation may have helped sufferers of these diseases & conditions (Consumer Reviews)

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