Vitamin B3 holds potential to prevent kidney injury: Study

Vitamin B3 has the potential to prevent acute kidney injury, an often fatal condition without a specific treatment, a study has found.

The condition causes a build-up of waste products in the blood and an imbalance of fluids throughout the body.

Acute kidney injury, which affects up to 30-40 percent of all hospitalized adults in low-income countries, can occur from ailments that place the body into extreme stress -- putting patients, particularly those in intensive care units, at risk.

Researchers led by Samir M Parikh from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the US discovered that levels of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) -- the end result of vitamin B3 after it is ingested-declines in cases of acute kidney injury.

"We were able to detect a drop in NAD+ in the urine of high-risk patients who were either in an intensive care unit or undergoing a major surgery and found that oral vitamin B3 could safely elevate NAD+ in high-risk patients," said Parikh, who is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in the US.

"These findings are very early, but the results suggest that we could one day have a non-invasive test for NAD+ status and perhaps even treat acute kidney injury by boosting NAD+ levels," said Parikh.

Researchers made the discovery by studying the metabolic changes associated with acute kidney injury in a mouse model.

In subsequent human studies, the team found high urinary quinolinate in patients undergoing major surgery at risk for acute kidney injury and confirmed this metabolite pattern in a separate study of 329 intensive care unit patients also at risk for acute kidney injury.

The team then gave large doses of oral vitamin B3 to 41 cardiac surgery patients enrolled in a Phase 1 pilot study.

"Our results suggest that NAD+ biosynthesis becomes impaired during human acute kidney injury and that augmenting vitamin B3 levels may be safe and potentially beneficial to patients," said Kamal Khabbaz of BIDMC, who co-led the clinical trial.

"We showed that urinary measurements in at-risk patients can indicate this impairment and, furthermore, predict adverse outcomes. Restoring NAD+ could constitute an important advance for patients at risk for acute kidney injury, though further studies are needed to verify these findings," Khabbaz said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)