Table 2.

Main findings on the role of niacin in other neurological diseases.

	Effector	Main Findings	Ref.
Ischemic and traumatic injuries	Niacin	Diminishes TBI-dependent behavioral deficits and improves functional recovery	[175,176,177,178,179,180]
	Nam	Reduces neurologic deficits, hippocampal apoptosis, axonal injury and microglial activation in corpus callosum and oxidative stress; restores NAD(P) content; represses MAPK signaling and caspase 3 cleavage	[181]
	Nam mononucleotide	Ameliorates hippocampal injury and improves neurological outcome, by decreasing poly-ADP-ribosylated proteins and NAD+ catabolism	[182]
	Nam/PARP-1 antagonists	Pre-treatment improves ATP content and neuronal recovery during re-oxygenation	[183]
	Niaspan (niacin)	Increases local cerebral blood flow; promotes angiogenesis via angpt/Tie2, Akt and eNOS pathways; promotes arteriogenesis via TACE and Notch signaling; ameliorates functional deficits	[184,185]
	Niacin plus selenium	Attenuate cortical cell injury, via an increase in Akt phosphorylation and expression of Nrf2; reduce oxidative stress.	[186]
	Nam plus progesterone	Increase function recovery; reduce lesion cavitation and tissue loss; modulate expression of inflammatory and immune genes	[187,188]
	NAMPT	Decreased activity exacerbates post-ischemic brain damage Heterozygous gene deletion aggravates brain damage following photothrombosis-induced focal ischemia Gene over-expression reduces infarct size	[189,190] [190] [191]
Headaches	Niacin	Restores mitochondrial energy metabolism Ameliorates blood flow and oxygenation in contracted skeletal muscle	[192,193]
	Nicotinic acid	Dilates intracranial vessels and contracts extracranial vessels; increases skin biosynthesis of prostaglandin D2; rises plasma content of 9a,11b-prostaglandin F2	[194,195,196]
Psychiatric disorders	Niacin	Low dietary intakes in neuropsychiatric patients	[197]
	Nam	Positive correlation between vitamin levels and schizophrenia Chronic supplementation effective in maintaining a bipolar type II patient stable and calm	[198] [199]

Akt: protein kinase B; Angpt: angiopoietin1; eNOS: endothelial Nitric oxide synthase; MAPK: mitogen-activated protein kinase; Nam: nicotinamide; NAMPT: nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase; Nrf2: Nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2; PARP-1: poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1; TACE: tumor necrosis factor-alpha-converting enzyme; TBI: traumatic brain injury.