On a New Podcast, Dr. Vilhelm Bohr Discussed His Alzheimer’s Research, and the Benefits of Nicotinamide Riboside (NR)

On a podcast published this week entitled “An NAD Booster That Improves Cellular Health In The Brain“, Dr. Vilhelm Bohr, a molecular biologist, professor at the University of Copenhagen, and former chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), discussed his Alzheimer’s research, and his enthusiasm for NAD+ boosting vitamin supplement Nicotinamide Riboside “NR” (FAQs) (Reviews). Dr. Bohr’s research reminds us of similar work by Alzheimer’s expert Dr. Rudy Tanzi. The following is an excerpt from Dr. Bohr’s podcast interview (transcript and video below):

From the Modern Healthspan Podcast (at the 2:22 mark):

HOST:

“So, you have been looking at Alzheimer’s in mice models, particularly, I believe, and trying to slow them down or reverse them using NAD precursors.

Could you talk about that?

What have you done?

Which NAD precursors are you using?

And what do you see?

DR. BOHR:

“So, NAD is a very essential molecule in cellular metabolism in general, and is involved in DNA damage processing, in mitochondrial mitophagy functions, and multitudes of other processes, and regulates sirtuins, which also is a major player in mitochondrial function and genomic instability.

So, we early became interested, that’s been for many years now, we’ve worked with this supplementation of NAD because NAD levels appear to be lower in many of the conditions that we’re studying in relation to Alzheimer’s, and rare diseases that relate to Alzheimer’s in different ways.

So, we targeted NAD for intervention.

And there are many ways to supplement NAD.

But Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) is one of the very useful ways to do it.

Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) is a very effective stimulator of NAD metabolism.

And one of the things that I really find attractive about using Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) is that the safety is very high.

So, many studies have been done with Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) without seeing any significant side effects as contrasted to many of the other interventions that we’re interested in with aging.

NR is pretty safe.

And, so, the NR plays a role in these functions and we then have been supplementing, giving mice, and also worms, nematodes, and also in human studies, supplementation with Nicotinamide Riboside (NR), we’ll call it NR, and seeing major beneficial effects.

It works on direct mitochondrial mitophagy stimulation, and also on the DNA repair process.

And these are again the two central processes for me in understanding aging and neurodegeneration.

HOST:

“Do we know what the mechanism is by which NAD levels are going to help autophagy?

DR. Bohr:

“So, we know that a lot of the processes that are needed require high levels of NAD.

NAD is also known to decline with aging.

And NAD gets depleted when you have DNA damage in the cell because the process of what’s called parylation, a process that is essential in the DNA damage handling pathways eats up the NAD in the cell.

So, there is a connection here between DNA damage accumulation and lower levels of NAD.

Lower levels of NAD cause mitochondrial dysfunction by simply not supporting important mitochondrial enzymes like the sirtuins, and others, and multitude of enzymes.

And, so, if you reach a level of lower NAD, you’re prone to lose mitochondrial function in the form of, not only mitophagy, but mainly mitophagy.

Related:

• NAD+ booster “NR” and Alzheimer’s (FAQs)
• NAD+ booster “NR” (FAQs) (Anecdotes) (Podcasts)

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