What Is The Link Between NAD+ And Your Cells’ Innate Immune Response?
Just like our planet is mustering up the resources to fight the ongoing COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, so too do our cells need energy to support cellular repair. NAD+ may hold the key to supporting cellular resilience in the face of immune stress, like viral infections. Newly published preclinical research from ChromaDex Chief Scientific Advisor Dr. Charles Brenner and his fellow investigators deepens our understanding of this important molecule.
From Energy To Immunity
Maintaining your health in the face of a virus like COVID-19 is hard work on your cells which require the energy to help repair the damage caused by free radicals [1]. NAD+ is essential to every step of this process, powering repair enzymes called sirtuins and PARPs [2-4].
Subduing A Virus
Like many viruses, COVID-19 first invades your cells long before you see any symptoms. In order to replicate and spread, it needs to hijack your cellular machinery to make millions of copies of itself.
Your cells try to foil this plan with NAD-dependent enzymes like PARPs, but COVID has evolved its own countermeasure, an enzyme called poly-ADP ribose glycohydrolase (PARG), to disable the immune response [5].
A cat and mouse game between host cell and virus ensues, draining your cells of NAD+. Initial tissue studies of infected human and animal lungs suggest the virus may even try to suppress your cells from producing more NAD+ [6, 7].
Cancer Research Points to Key Unknowns about Popular “Antiaging” Supplements
As the world’s aging population grows rapidly, so has its appetite for health tips, tricks and products that could help guard against the ravages of time. Among countless dietary supplements—vitamins, minerals and other products—some people have pinned their hopes on a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), a key player in the cellular production of energy. Often written as NAD+, the name of its oxidized form, the molecule participates in a host of metabolic pathways and is involved in other important processes, such as DNA repair. NAD+ levels naturally decline as people and animals age, and this loss has been proposed as contributing to the underlying physiology of aging…
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