Is Nicotinamide legal in the United Kingdom?

A plain form of vitamin B3. In a large final-stage study of 386 people at high risk, 500 mg twice a day cut new skin cancers other than melanoma by 23 percent over 12 months. The benefit stopped once the pills stopped. The same study in 158 organ transplant patients found nothing. No study has ever tested it against ageing.

Nicotinamide is the cheapest thing in this whole group. It is also the only NAD-pathway product with a winning large final-stage study on a health result a patient would notice.

How it works: Nicotinamide is turned back into NAD by the recycling route. First an enzyme called NAMPT turns it into NMN.

Approval history: Not an approved drug for preventing skin cancer in the United States. It is a standard form of the vitamin niacin. It is sold over the counter and found in multivitamins and skin care products. The dose used in the ONTRAC study is an over-the-counter dose, used off label, meaning outside any approved use.

Licenses medicines for sale in the UK. A compound without a licence to be sold (a marketing authorisation) is an unlicensed medicine. The law only lets it reach people through a prescriber, under the specials scheme (unlicensed medicines made for one patient's needs). It cannot be sold as a research product.

The legal category above is how The Longevity Archive reads Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency listings for Nicotinamide on the reviewed date. It is not a legal opinion. Rules change. Bringing a compound into the country, prescribing it and owning it can each be treated differently. Check with the agency before you act on anything here.

Check MHRA directly

Whether Nicotinamide is banned in sport is set by the World Anti-Doping Code and by military rules, not by its legal status in the United Kingdom. Before you compete or get tested, look up Nicotinamide by name on the Prohibited List, or look up a named product in Global DRO. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, category S0 bans, at all times, any drug-like substance that meets two tests. No other section of the List covers it. And no government health regulator anywhere has a current approval for it as a treatment in people. Many substances that are approved somewhere are banned by name in another section. So approval does not mean a substance is allowed in sport.

• WADA Prohibited List
• Global DRO (check a named product)
• USADA (US athletes)
• Operation Supplement Safety (US service members)

The rules you compete or serve under decide this, not this page.