Follow the funding.
Every study behind a Caveat check, searchable, with who paid for it named out loud. These are our own verified appraisals, not a guess from a database. Independent, no industry money.
Independent 212 · Industry 94 · Mixed 37 · Unknown 41 · N/A 30
Showing 414 of 414 appraised studies across 80 checks
- DietAlcohol Misleading
- Independent
Zhao/Stockwell 2023, bias-corrected meta-analysis
Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction subcontract on a Health Canada grant; no alcohol-industry money. Stockwell disclosed expert-witness fees.
Limits: Observational; relies on correcting abstainer bias, not on randomized trials.
- Independent
Lankester 2021, Mendelian randomization (UK Biobank)
US NIH NHLBI and NIDDK grants. Co-author Ingelsson disclosed prior GlaxoSmithKline employment (pharma, not alcohol).
Limits: MR assumes no pleiotropy; ADH1B variant rare in some populations; some estimates attenuate in multivariable models.
- Independent
GBD 2016 Alcohol Collaborators (Lancet 2018)
Gates Foundation / academic (IHME, University of Washington); no industry funding.
Limits: Modeled relative risks pooled across heterogeneous sources.
- Independent
WHO 2023 statement / Lancet Public Health
World Health Organization; no industry funding.
Limits: Statement, not primary data; rests on IARC carcinogen classification.
- Industry-funded
NIH MACH15 cancellation (STAT 2018)
~$100M largely from liquor companies via the NIH Foundation; cited as evidence of conflict, not of an alcohol effect.
Limits: Trial never ran; design judged too short to detect cancer harms.
- Independent
- EnvironmentalAluminium Unsupported
- Independent
Mirick 2002 (breast cancer)
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; abstract states no funder, so 'independent' is an inference.
Limits: Single case-control design subject to recall bias; one of few dedicated studies.
- Independent
Flarend 2001 (dermal absorption)
Academic tracer study; PubMed tags US Gov't Non-PHS / Non-US Gov't, no industry money.
Limits: Tiny n=2 preliminary design; absorption ~0.012% of dose.
- Industry-funded
de Ligt 2022 (dermal absorption)
100% funded by Cosmetics Europe; five authors employed by cosmetics companies.
Limits: Small n=12; favourable to industry but directionally agrees with Flarend (~0.0005%).
- Independent
Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation review
Non-profit research foundation; no antiperspirant-industry tie.
Limits: Review, not primary data; antacid/occupational exposures, not antiperspirant cohort.
- Not applicable
American Cancer Society position
Major non-profit; no relevant commercial conflict.
Limits: Summary statement, not a primary study.
- Independent
- DietArtificial sweeteners Misleading
- Independent
WHO/IARC/JECFA joint aspartame statement (2023)
WHO/FAO expert bodies; no commercial sponsor.
Limits: Hazard tier (2B) is widely misread as real-world risk; based on limited evidence.
- Independent
WHO non-sugar-sweetener guideline (2023)
Publicly funded WHO process.
Limits: Underlying evidence low-certainty; a benefit/risk message, not a toxicity finding.
- Mixed funding
Suez et al., Cell (2022)
Weizmann lab; senior authors Segal and Elinav co-founded personalized-nutrition firm DayTwo, a conflict on the gut-harm narrative.
Limits: Short; surrogate markers; large person-to-person variation; aspartame/stevia null.
- Independent
Debras et al., PLOS Medicine (2022)
Publicly funded (Inserm/Sorbonne Paris Nord).
Limits: Self-reported intake; residual confounding and reverse causation; small effect sizes.
- Independent
Serrano et al., Microbiome (2021)
Academic; the neutral counter-evidence.
Limits: Saccharin only; human arm at maximum acceptable intake, not above it.
- Independent
- SupplementsAshwagandha Mixed
- Industry-funded
Chandrasekhar 2012, stress/cortisol RCT
Used branded KSM-66 extract supplied by Ixoreal Biomed; paper prints nil-COI, a foundational KSM-66 marketing trial.
Limits: Small, short, single-site; commercial extract.
- Industry-funded
Lopresti 2019, stress/cortisol/testosterone RCT
Funded by Arjuna Natural Ltd, which supplied the Shoden extract.
Limits: Small; testosterone non-significant between groups.
- Mixed funding
BJPsych Open 2025 meta-analysis
Pools predominantly small industry-linked branded-extract trials.
Limits: Inherits source-trial bias; no QoL improvement.
- Independent
Cheah 2021 sleep meta-analysis
Review unfunded, no competing interests; flags one included trial as manufacturer-sponsored.
Limits: All India; I2=62%; moderate quality.
- Industry-funded
Wankhede 2015 strength/testosterone RCT
Used branded KSM-66 (Ixoreal); most-cited male-vitality result.
Limits: Both arms did resistance training: effect confounded.
- Industry-funded
- FitnessVO₂max Mixed
- Independent
Mandsager et al., JAMA Network Open, 2018
Conflicts of interest: "None reported." Single academic center (Cleveland Clinic); no industry sponsor. Authors explicitly state the association "does not prove causation."
Limits: Observational; cannot rule out reverse causation/preselection (authors say so). Population referred for treadmill testing, not a general-population sample.
- Independent
Kodama et al., JAMA, 2009 (meta-analysis)
Listed as "Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't." No commercial product sponsor.
Limits: Pools observational cohorts only, establishes a consistent dose-response association, not causation.
- Independent
Ross et al., AHA Scientific Statement, Circulation, 2016
American Heart Association statement; indexed record lists two VA grants (I01 RX000344, IK6 RX002477). No commercial product sponsor.
Limits: Synthesizes observational data; explicitly frames fitness as a predictor/vital sign, not a proven causal intervention.
- Mixed funding
Lee et al., Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, Circulation, 2011
NIH grants (AG06945, HL62508, DK088195) PLUS "an unrestricted research grant from The Coca-Cola Company." Authors declared no conflicts. The Coca-Cola tie is flagged given the company's documented interest in framing inactivity, rather than diet, as the driver of poor health, an interest this study's pro-fitness conclusion happens to serve.
Limits: Observational; men only; referral/treadmill-tested population; the change-in-fitness inference rests on this single-sex cohort. Weakest of the anchor studies, should not carry the "improving fitness" claim alone.
- Independent
Kokkinos et al., JACC, 2023 (VA Exercise Testing cohort)
Veterans Affairs / academic. Authors reported "no relationships relevant to the contents of this paper to disclose." No commercial sponsor identified.
Limits: Observational; veteran population skews male/middle-aged; a ≥2-MET fitness decline tracked with 69–74% higher mortality, but change-in-fitness associations remain susceptible to reverse causation.
- Independent
Kjaergaard et al., J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 2025 (Mendelian randomization)
Novo Nordisk Foundation, NIH NIDDK (R01 DK124258, R01 DK129850), Boston Children's Hospital endowment. "The authors have nothing to disclose." Transparency note: the Novo Nordisk Foundation is a pharma-linked philanthropy; the null finding here does not favor any product, so the conflict risk is low.
Limits: VO₂max instrument uses *estimated* fitness (submaximal test); some GWAS sample overlap; parental lifespan is a noisy longevity proxy. The null is not definitive, but the same instruments detected expected upstream effects, so it is a genuine signal, not a dead instrument.
- Independent
Dibben et al., Cochrane Review, 2021 (exercise-based cardiac rehab)
Cochrane Collaboration review; standard Cochrane independence/COI policy.
Limits: All-cause mortality non-significant (RR 0.87 short-term, 0.91 long-term; CIs cross 1.0; moderate certainty, downgraded for imprecision). Population is coronary-disease patients, not healthy adults, transfers imperfectly to the general claim.
- Independent
Ballin & Nordström, J Intern Med, 2021 (critical review of RCTs)
Academic (Umeå University); no commercial sponsor identified.
Limits: Narrative, not a pooled meta-analysis. Concludes RCT evidence "shows that exercise does not prevent premature mortality or CVD", an active negative finding, weighed alongside the structural reasons large mortality-powered exercise trials are rarely run.
- Independent
- FrontierAubrey de Grey Unproven
- Independent
EMBO Reports SENS critique (Warner et al.)
University-based academics; no industry sponsorship indicated.
Limits: Opinion/commentary, not an empirical study; full abstract not rendered on PubMed, substance corroborated via tertiary sources.
- Independent
MIT Technology Review SENS Challenge
Run with the Methuselah Foundation; judging panel independent.
Limits: Cited URL is the Estep dissent page, not the judges' verdict; the partial-prize figure is not verifiable there.
- Industry-funded
LEV Foundation Robust Mouse Rejuvenation Study 1 (design)
Claimant's own foundation; reliable for design, interested party on results.
Limits: Design page only; no outcomes reported.
- Independent
Independent analysis of RMR1 survival data (Gowing Life)
Third-party science blog, not selling the therapies.
Limits: Based on preliminary, non-peer-reviewed data.
- Independent
- SupplementsBerberine Misleading
- Independent
Liu D et al., berberine on metabolic syndrome components, meta-analysis, Frontiers in Pharmacology 2025
Paper declares no commercial or financial conflict of interest.
Limits: Pooled trials are small, heterogeneous and predominantly Chinese; BMI effect borderline.
- Funding unknown
Xie et al., glucose-lowering effect of berberine in type 2 diabetes, meta-analysis, Frontiers in Pharmacology 2022
Academic meta-analysis; funding not clearly stated.
Limits: Authors note studies mostly China-based and of moderate quality (poor allocation concealment/blinding).
- Mixed funding
Yin J, Xing H, Ye J, berberine in type 2 diabetes, Metabolism 2008
Supported by Xinhua Hospital plus partial NIH grant support; no pharmaceutical sponsor. Conducted in China.
Limits: Small; ~34.5% GI side effects across studies; weight outcomes for Study A not reported in the abstract.
- Industry-funded
Rubino D et al., STEP 4, semaglutide weight-loss maintenance, JAMA 2021
Sponsored by Novo Nordisk; authors include company employees and a shareholder. Favourable result.
Limits: Cited only as the semaglutide benchmark, not as berberine evidence.
- Industry-funded
Garvey WT et al., STEP 5, two-year semaglutide, Nature Medicine 2022
Novo Nordisk funded and ran the trial. Favourable result.
Limits: Industry-run; cited only as the comparator standard.
- Independent
- LifestyleBlue Zones Misleading
- Independent
Poulain & Herm, Okinawa demographic trends, J Intern Med 2024
Academic; Poulain co-originated the Blue Zone concept, so biased toward defending it, yet reports erosion.
Limits: Confirms pre-1940 advantage but post-WWII mortality now higher than mainland Japan; authors urge age validation.
- Independent
Poulain & Herm, 'Blue Zone, a Demographic Concept and Beyond', Am J Lifestyle Med 2025
Authors are concept originators (pro-Blue-Zones intellectual COI), strengthening their causality concession.
Limits: A defense, yet concedes diet's causal role is unproven and the diet is not homogeneous or stable over time.
- Industry-funded
Buettner & Skemp, 'Blue Zones: Lessons', Am J Lifestyle Med 2016
Authored by the founder of Blue Zones LLC; direct commercial conflict.
Limits: Self-authored statement of the claim; the 95%-plant and 10x-US figures are not independently verified.
- Independent
Tan et al., plant-based diet & mortality meta-analysis, Front Nutr 2024
Academic; no industry sponsor identified.
Limits: Healthy plant index RR 0.85 (0.80-0.90); unhealthy plant index RR 1.18 raises mortality. Observational; modest effect.
- Independent
Holt-Lunstad et al., social relationships & mortality, PLoS Med 2010
Academic; no commercial conflict.
Limits: OR 1.50 (1.42-1.59) for survival; 'comparable to well-established risk factors.' Observational.
- Independent
- PeptidesBPC-157 Unproven
- Funding unknown
Vasireddi et al., HSS Journal 2025, systematic review
No funding or conflicts disclosed in the accessible record.
Limits: Underlying evidence graded Level IV/V; single group dominates the literature; no human RCT exists.
- Independent
He et al., Frontiers in Pharmacology 2022, animal PK
Funded by China's National Natural Science Foundation and Shaanxi provincial programs; authors declared no commercial/financial ties.
Limits: Animal-only; very short half-life (<30 min); human PK and dosing entirely unknown.
- Industry-funded
Novo Nordisk citizen petition (FDA-2024-P-4937) quoting FDA's BPC-157 Category 2 rationale
Authored by Novo Nordisk (commercial interest), not the FDA; it quotes FDA's actual BPC-157 immunogenicity/impurity language verbatim.
Limits: Petition is chiefly about semaglutide; used only for the verbatim FDA BPC-157 safety quote, not as a primary FDA document.
- Industry-funded
NCT02637284, Phase 1 oral BPC-157 safety trial (PharmaCotherapia)
Sponsor PharmaCotherapia, tied to patent-holder P. Sikiric; classic sponsor/COI red flag.
Limits: CT.gov status is 'Unknown' (last active 2015); no human results ever posted; 'withdrawn before review' detail is STAT-sourced.
- Independent
STAT News investigation, Feb 2026
Independent newsroom; corroborates COI, evidence gap and grey-market purity concerns.
Limits: Journalism, not primary data; cancer/angiogenesis concern is theoretical and disputed by Sikiric's group.
- Funding unknown
- ProtocolsBlueprint Unproven
- Independent
Belsky et al., DunedinPACE (eLife)
Academic (Duke/Columbia/King's College London); NIH and related public funding. Authors developed the algorithm.
Limits: Population-level reliability (ICC ~0.96); authors state surrogate-endpoint status is not yet established. Validates the clock for research, not for certifying one person's response.
- Independent
Waziry/Ryan/Belsky, CALERIE caloric restriction RCT (Nature Aging)
NIH/NIA-funded CALERIE consortium; not industry-funded.
Limits: Only ~2-3% group-level DunedinPACE slowing; PhenoAge/GrimAge unchanged; no disease/mortality outcomes yet. Tests calorie restriction, not Blueprint.
- Independent
Higgins-Chen & Levine, clock reliability (Nature Aging)
Academic (Yale); NIH/NIA + NIMH public funding. Authors are clock methodologists, not product sellers.
Limits: Shows up to ~9-year disagreement between replicate reads of the same sample; reliable tracking needed a PC retraining fix. A single n=1 reading is weak without noise control.
- Independent
Apsley, Etzel, Ye & Shalev, limits of clocks as personal biomarkers (Epigenomics)
NIH/NSF-funded academics (Penn State; Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign); no product interest.
Limits: Concludes clocks 'fail to meet common standards for clinical utility' and individual use 'can be uninformative and potentially harmful.' Argument, not a Blueprint-specific experiment.
- Independent
Shalev & Apsley, plain-language explainer (The Conversation)
Authors are NIH/NSF-funded academics (Penn State; Univ. of Illinois); no product interest.
Limits: Popular-press piece; states clocks are 'not appropriate tools for individual health decisions' and best used on populations. Notes fluctuation with diet/illness/time of day. Does not itself discuss seller conflicts of interest.
- Independent
Borrus et al., 'When to Trust Epigenetic Clocks' (bioRxiv preprint)
Academic preprint (Yale Dept. of Psychiatry; NIA grants + Yale fellowships); no product-seller funding.
Limits: Preprint, used for context only. Shows first-generation clocks throw false positives that vanish after correction; reliable signals need multiple clocks to agree.
- Funding unknown
Levine critique of the '31 years' math (commentary, via NMN.com)
Published on a site in the longevity-supplement space (NMN.com); used only as a conduit for Morgan Levine's methodological argument, which aligns with sources 1 and 3.
Limits: Not peer-reviewed and hosted on a commercial site; cited only for the methodological point that pace cannot be converted into 'years.'
- Independent
ACSH critique of the Blueprint protocol
American Council on Science and Health, an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit; no stake in Blueprint.
Limits: Opinion/analysis, not original data. Characterizes results as 'a case study' with 'no way to guarantee' causation; notes abandoned interventions.
- Industry-funded
Blueprint 'Speed of Aging' test product page (money trail)
Seller's own site; Johnson profits from the test and products underlying the claim.
Limits: Confirms the $325 DNA-methylation test across 11 organ systems (conflict-of-interest evidence). Does not itself carry the headline quotes.
- Industry-funded
Johnson, 'I have the world's slowest speed of aging' (Blueprint blog)
Johnson's own commercial site; he sells the products and test behind the claim.
Limits: Source of the verbatim claims (0.48; 'birthday every 2 years'; three-test average 0.54; #1 of 5,677). Self-reported, uncontrolled, marketing context.
- Independent
- SupplementsCalcium AKG Mixed
- Industry-funded
Asadi Shahmirzadi et al., Cell Metabolism (mouse lifespan/healthspan)
Author equity/board roles in Ponce de Leon Health; patents filed. Peer-reviewed.
Limits: Lifespan gain modest; significant in females only. Full text not directly accessible (403).
- Industry-funded
Demidenko et al., Aging (the '8-year' human study)
Data from Ponce de Leon customers; testing by partnered lab TruMe; co-author on company board.
Limits: No control, no randomization, self-selected; 9-CpG surrogate clock. Cannot show causation.
- Not applicable
Buck Institute press release
From institution employing some authors; magnitude framing only.
Limits: Not independent evidence; states human data still needed.
- Industry-funded
GlobeNewswire / Ponce de Leon press release
Issued for the product marketer.
Limits: Amplifies the n=42 study; not independent confirmation.
- Mixed funding
ABLE RCT protocol, GeroScience
Academically run (Singapore/Netherlands) but study product supplied by Ponce de Leon; Kennedy on advisory board.
Limits: Results not yet published; small (n=120), short (6 months); surrogate endpoint.
- Industry-funded
- DietCarnivore diet Unproven
- Independent
Lennerz et al. 2021, the most-cited carnivore survey
NIH grants (K23 DK119546, R03 DK123541, T32 AT004094); no industry funding. A descriptive survey, not an efficacy test.
Limits: No control group; self-reported outcomes and lipids; heavy selection and recall bias; authors call it preliminary.
- Not applicable
Kirwan et al. 2022, peer-reviewed critique of the survey
Letter; no relevant funding. Establishes the survey's limitations are recognised in the peer-reviewed literature.
Limits: Not original data; a critique. Notes echo-chamber selection, unverified lipids, 28 duplicate responses.
- Mixed funding
Klement & Matzat 2025, German pre/post bloods
No external study funding, but lead author follows an animal-based diet and received refunds from a carnivore supplement supplier (carnivoro.eu); a personal/supplier conflict, not study funding.
Limits: No control, no randomization, variable timing, mostly self-reported diet; despite favourable bias still shows a large adverse LDL rise.
- Independent
Wang et al. 2016, red/processed meat and mortality
National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 81370966); no competing interests declared.
Limits: Observational, residual confounding; unprocessed-red-meat associations weaker and significant only in US populations.
- Independent
Goedeke et al. 2024, nutrient modelling of carnivore plans
No external funding, no conflicts; authors include low-carb-sympathetic researchers, which strengthens the deficiency findings.
Limits: Models hypothetical plans, not measured intakes; real-world supplementation could offset some gaps.
- Independent
- Independent
Liao 2026, systematic review + meta-analysis (Eur J Med Res)
Chinese government research programmes (National Key R&D; Guangdong Provincial S&T; TZI-ZJU). Authors declared no competing interests.
Limits: Very recent; full risk-of-bias and heterogeneity appraisal not independently re-run. Pooled mean-glucose improvement is driven by prediabetic subgroups, not healthy users.
- Industry-funded
Berry 2020, PREDICT 1 (Nat Med)
Supported by ZOE (Zoe Global Ltd) plus Wellcome/MRC/BHF; multiple authors are consultants to or employees of ZOE, which sells products built on PREDICT.
Limits: Establishes between-person variability only; does not test whether flattening curves improves any health outcome.
- Independent
Hall 2018, 'glucotypes' (PLoS Biol)
Declared 'no competing interests'; funded by NIH/NSF/Stanford. But senior author Michael Snyder co-founded January AI, a commercial CGM company, an undisclosed conflict (per source 6).
Limits: Small, hypothesis-generating; authors call for long-term outcome studies. Documents patterns, not benefits of acting on them.
- Independent
Shah 2019, normative CGM profiles (J Clin Endocrinol Metab)
Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust (non-commercial). Lead author discloses Dexcom/Sanofi advisory and consultancy ties; funding source itself is independent.
Limits: Descriptive normative data, not an intervention; establishes what 'normal' looks like, not whether changing it helps.
- Mixed funding
Holzer 2022, CGM in healthy adults (Sensors)
'No external funding.' One co-author sits on the Abbott Advisory Board; others declare none.
Limits: Narrative review, not systematic; corroborates that outcome evidence in healthy people is limited and CGM has lag/accuracy constraints.
- Independent
- Independent
Roberts 2015, post-exercise cold immersion vs active recovery
ACSM Research Foundation and Exercise & Sport Science Australia; authors declare no competing interests.
Limits: Small; effect shown for immersion immediately after resistance training, not rest-day plunges.
- Independent
Bleakley 2022 Cochrane, cold immersion for muscle soreness
Cochrane editorial independence; specific funding not stated.
Limits: Low evidence quality; literature search extends only to Nov 2011; adverse events mostly unmonitored.
- Funding unknown
Sramek 2000, immersion at varied temperatures
Funding not stated in record.
Limits: Tiny sample, young healthy men; basis for the exact catecholamine/metabolic-rate magnitudes.
- Funding unknown
Jansky 1996, sympathetic response to cold immersion
Funding not stated in record.
Limits: Very small; found no significant dopamine rise, tempering Sramek's dopamine figure.
- Independent
Tabei 2024, metabolic effects of cold-activated BAT
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Chilean agencies (VID, Fondecyt).
Limits: No body-weight or fat-mass outcomes assessed; small pooled sample.
- Independent
- SupplementsCollagen Mixed
- Independent
Myung & Park 2025, Am J Med, independent meta-analysis (23 RCTs)
Authors reported no funding and no conflicts (triangulated; full text paywalled).
Limits: Subgroup effect sizes for the funded-vs-independent split not available in open materials; classification of some 'independent' trials is disputed by industry.
- Mixed funding
Pu et al. 2023, Nutrients, meta-analysis (26 RCTs)
Review itself funded by Taipei Municipal Wanfang Hospital, no COI; but pools many industry-funded primary trials with no funding subgroup.
Limits: Missing outcome data in 13 studies, small samples, instrument-dependent readouts.
- Funding unknown
Dewi et al. 2023, Cureus, meta-analysis (14 RCTs)
No competing interests declared; no explicit funding statement given.
Limits: Pools industry-funded primary trials; short durations; wrinkle effect small.
- Industry-funded
Bolke et al. 2019, Nutrients, single-product RCT (Elasten)
Funded by Quiris Healthcare; three of four authors affiliated with contract lab Dermatest (fourth is a university statistician).
Limits: Bundles co-actives (vitamin C, zinc, biotin, vitamin E), confounding attribution to collagen.
- Independent
- SupplementsCoQ10 Mixed
- Industry-funded
Q-SYMBIO RCT (Mortensen 2014, JACC Heart Fail)
Pharma Nord, Kaneka and International CoQ10 Association; favourable sponsor-funded result, flagged.
Limits: Small death counts, imprecise estimates; not guideline first-line.
- Industry-funded
Alehagen 2013 KiSel-10 baseline (Int J Cardiol)
Pharma Nord supported; CoQ10 marketer.
Limits: Combination in selenium-deficient elderly; CV mortality 5.9% vs 12.6% (p=0.015); CoQ10's solo effect unknown.
- Industry-funded
Alehagen 2015 10-yr follow-up (PLOS One)
Pharma Nord supported analysis costs.
Limits: HR 0.51 (95% CI 0.36-0.74) is for the combination, not CoQ10 alone.
- Industry-funded
J Nutr Sci 2025 statin-myopathy meta-analysis
Funded by Society for Applied Vitamin Research (GVF); industry-adjacent, reclassified per audit.
Limits: Muscle-pain WMD -0.96 but I-squared = 93%; pooled estimate unreliable.
- Independent
Jafari 2018 umbrella review (Indian Heart J)
Academic; no industry funding (None declared).
Limits: Rated evidence uncertain; supports adjunctive, not first-line, use; the hard mortality data lean heavily on Q-SYMBIO (Caveat analysis).
- Industry-funded
- SupplementsCreatine Mixed
- Independent
Avgerinos 2018 systematic review
NIH/National Institute on Aging-affiliated author (Kapogiannis); funded by NIH intramural grants. No creatine-industry funding.
Limits: Few, small, heterogeneous trials; benefit outside memory/reasoning called 'unclear'.
- Mixed funding
Prokopidis 2023 memory meta-analysis
Paper states 'No external funds supported this work,' but author COIs are real: Forbes a former scientific advisor to a creatine company; Candow on AlzChem's (creatine maker) Scientific Advisory Board. Unfunded but conflicted.
Limits: I-squared 66%; overall effect later shown to rest on a double-counting error and to hold only in older adults on re-analysis.
- Not applicable
Letter to the Editor + authors' reply (methodological critique)
Methodological commentary; no funding relevant.
Limits: Abstract-level; specific re-analysis outcome confirmed via authors' reply rather than the letter abstract itself.
- Independent
Xu 2024 cognition meta-analysis (independent)
Funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China; authors declare no commercial conflicts. Key independent corroboration of the memory signal.
Limits: High heterogeneity; null for overall cognition and executive function; short-term cognitive-test outcomes only.
- Independent
Gordji-Nejad 2024 sleep-deprivation crossover
Funded by Forschungszentrum Julich and RWTH Aachen (academic); one author disclosed unrelated industry ties (imaging firms), no creatine-industry funding.
Limits: Very small n; single very high acute dose (0.35 g/kg) under an extreme stressor, not typical daily use.
- Independent
- SupplementsCurcumin Mixed
- Funding unknown
Daily 2016, turmeric/curcumin for joint arthritis (meta-analysis)
No funding/COI statement in the abstract; OA curcumin trials in this field are frequently maker-sponsored.
Limits: Authors state trial number, sample size and methodological quality insufficient for definitive conclusions.
- Independent
Wai 2025, turmeric products for knee OA (network meta-analysis)
Paper states it received no specific grant and declares no competing interests; pooled primary trials still include maker-sponsored products.
Limits: GRADE certainty low to very low for all significant outcomes; only 35% of trials at low risk of bias.
- Independent
Naghsh 2023, inflammatory biomarkers after curcumin (umbrella meta-analysis)
Authors declared no conflicts; pooled primary trials are of mixed, partly industry-funded provenance.
Limits: High heterogeneity for CRP (I2=62%) and IL-6 (I2=76%); biomarkers are surrogates, not clinical outcomes.
- Independent
Nelson 2017, the essential medicinal chemistry of curcumin
Academic authors, no commercial stake; the strongest skeptical source.
Limits: Narrative critique, not an outcome trial; addresses mechanism and reliability, not clinical efficacy directly.
- Independent
LiverTox (NIH/NIDDK), turmeric entry
NIH/NIDDK government resource, independent of industry.
Limits: Idiosyncratic injury is rare and dose/formulation dependent; absolute risk per user is not quantified.
- Funding unknown
- ProtocolsDave Asprey Unsupported
- Independent
Cochrane: reducing saturated fat for cardiovascular disease
Cochrane review; NIHR/academic support, no industry sponsor of the analysis.
Limits: Cardiovascular events fell 17%; little effect on all-cause mortality on this timescale.
- Mixed funding
Engel & Tholstrup: butter vs olive oil on blood lipids
University of Copenhagen; dossier notes partial dairy-sector support, unverified on the cited page, yet result was unfavorable to butter.
Limits: Short (about 5-week periods); measures LDL, not clinical outcomes; butter also raised HDL.
- Independent
Harvey 2018: MCT and time to nutritional ketosis
Human Potential Centre, AUT University; no-conflict declaration not visible on cited abstract.
Limits: 20 days; faster time-to-ketosis not significant; ketone biomarker only, no lifespan endpoint.
- Independent
Khaw 2018: coconut oil vs butter vs olive oil
Investigator-led, Cambridge; NIHR/MRC support, no commercial product sponsor.
Limits: 4 weeks; LDL endpoint, not clinical outcomes or lifespan.
- Independent
- ProtocolsDavid Sinclair Mixed
- Mixed funding
Lu et al. 2020, Nature: reprogramming restores vision in mice
Academic/NIH plus foundation; Sinclair is a named inventor and Life Biosciences/Iduna equity holder (disclosed).
Limits: Mouse-only; gene therapy, not a supplement; no lifespan endpoint.
- Industry-funded
Okabe et al. 2022, Frontiers in Nutrition: oral NMN safety and blood NAD+
Funded by Mitsubishi Corporation Life Sciences; several authors were employees who prepared the NMN/placebo.
Limits: Endpoint was safety plus blood NAD+; no aging, healthspan, or lifespan outcome.
- Industry-funded
Sirtris/GSK resveratrol program history
Documents GSK's industry-funded SRT501 program and its 2010 termination.
Limits: Secondary summary; underlying assay-artifact and shutdown facts well documented.
- Industry-funded
GSK halts SRT501 (analyst report, 2010)
Reports on GSK-funded clinical program.
Limits: Single indication; documents failure, not aging efficacy.
- Not applicable
TAME metformin trial status (2024)
Chronically underfunded; metformin is generic so no pharma sponsor.
Limits: Not yet reported; no human aging outcome exists.
- Mixed funding
- DetoxDetox products Unsupported
- Funding unknown
Klein & Kiat 2015, critical review of detox diets
Funding/COI not shown on the abstract; peer-reviewed dietetics journal, University of Sydney / Macquarie University authors.
Limits: Narrative not systematic; reflects scarcity of primary trials rather than resolving it.
- Independent
Kennedy et al. 2012, controlled ionic footbath test
Funded by the Holistic Health Research Foundation and Canadian CAM Research Fund; manufacturer donated the device but had 'no other involvement', null result despite a donated machine.
Limits: Small (n=6) proof-of-principle design; adequate to show no signal, not a large RCT.
- Independent
Independent lab analysis of used foot pads (encyclopaedic summary)
Underlying lab test was commissioned by journalists, not industry; used here only as a pointer to the primary finding.
Limits: Tertiary source; cited as a signpost, not as primary evidence.
- Independent
Harvard Health, what is being cleansed in a cleanse
Harvard Medical School publication; no industry funding.
Limits: Commentary, not a primary study; synthesises existing evidence and documents harms.
- Independent
Cleveland Clinic, why foot detoxes do not work
Cleveland Clinic; no industry funding.
Limits: Commentary, not a primary study.
- Funding unknown
- HormonesDHEA Unsupported
- Independent
Nair 2006, NEJM, 2-year RCT in elderly with low DHEAS
NIH/NIA grants (P01 AG14283, M01 RR00585); no industry sponsor.
Limits: Enrolled low-DHEAS people most likely to benefit, yet functional outcomes were null.
- Funding unknown
Corona 2013, JCEM, meta-analysis in elderly men
Funding/COI not disclosed; academic endocrinology authors.
Limits: Small fat-mass effect vanished after adjusting for sex steroids; mostly short trials.
- Independent
Grimley Evans 2006, Cochrane, DHEA for cognition
Cochrane Collaboration; no commercial sponsor.
Limits: Few trials and limited data, but consistently null on cognition and wellbeing.
- Funding unknown
Zhu 2021, Steroids, estradiol dose-response in women
Funding/COI not disclosed; supports only the biomarker point.
Limits: Establishes estradiol rise, not any functional or anti-aging benefit.
- Independent
- EnvironmentalEMF Unsupported
- Independent
Karipidis 2024, WHO-commissioned systematic review
Commissioned and part-funded by WHO; further support from NZ Ministry of Health, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, ARPANSA. No telecom-industry funding stated.
Limits: Built on observational studies that can bound but never prove zero risk; a published ICBE-EMF critique disputes the conclusions.
- Independent
COSMOS prospective cohort (Feychting/Elwood 2024)
World Health Organization and UK Medical Research Council; authors declared no competing financial interests.
Limits: Median follow-up still only ~7 years; relies on calibrated self-report plus operator data. Strength: exposure recorded before diagnosis, so immune to recall bias.
- Independent
UK Million Women Study (Schuz 2022)
UK Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK; authors declared no conflict of interest.
Limits: Heavy attrition and early/coarse exposure assessment; very few heavy users, so weak for testing the heavy-use hypothesis.
- Independent
Danish nationwide cohort (Frei 2011)
Danish Strategic Research Council; Swiss National Science Foundation; no competing interests declared.
Limits: Subscription used as exposure proxy misclassifies the heaviest (corporate) users, biasing toward the null.
- Independent
Little 2012, US glioma incidence vs phone uptake
NIH Intramural Research Program; National Cancer Institute.
Limits: Ecological design cannot detect a small individual-level effect; compatible with small INTERPHONE risks, incompatible with large Hardell risks.
- Independent
Zhang & Muscat 2025, SEER brain-tumour trends 2000-2021
Stated as not funded by any institution; authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Limits: Ecological design; cannot establish individual causation, only test plausibility of large effects against real trends.
- Independent
NTP 2-year rat/mouse RF bioassay
US Government (NIH/NIEHS). No industry funding.
Limits: Whole-body exposure 9 hrs/day for 2 years at or above human SAR limits; clear effect only in male rats, ambiguous in females and mice; survival confound; NTP says do not extrapolate to humans.
- Independent
IARC 2011 Group 2B classification (Press Release N 208)
IARC (WHO agency); no commercial funding.
Limits: A hazard label about strength of evidence, not a risk estimate; driven largely by one heavy-user finding (~40% raised glioma OR); the group did not quantify risk.
- Independent
- DiagnosticsEpigenetic age tests Misleading
- Independent
Lu 2019, GrimAge predicts lifespan/healthspan
NIH-funded academic work; UC/UCLA holds a patent with Lu and Horvath as inventors.
Limits: Group-level prediction; not validated as a personal intervention-tracking tool.
- Independent
Belsky 2022, DunedinPACE pace-of-aging clock
NIA/MRC funding; Duke/Univ. of Otago hold a licensed patent, authors as inventors.
Limits: High reliability (ICC ~0.96) but a research instrument; individual responsiveness to interventions not outcome-validated.
- Independent
Higgins-Chen 2022, reliability of clocks (Nature Aging)
NIA-funded; authors are patent inventors and disclose ties to TruDiagnostic/FOXO, yet conclusions are cautionary. (See source note: the abstract is verified; full disclosures are in the peer-reviewed paper.)
Limits: Reliability shown mainly for first-generation clocks; PC versions fix most of it.
- Independent
Borrus 2024, false positives in intervention studies
NIA-funded (R01AG060110, R01AG065403); authors disclose consulting ties to TruDiagnostic, FOXO, Cambrian BioPharma, LongevityTech.fund.
Limits: Preprint; re-analysis of existing data, not a new trial.
- Independent
Horvath 2013, foundational multi-tissue clock
UCLA academic; no consumer-test sponsorship in the 2013 paper.
Limits: First-generation, trained on chronological age; later shown to have poor test-retest reliability.
- Independent
- PeptidesEpitalon Unproven
- Industry-funded
Khavinson et al. 2003, Epitalon induces telomerase activity in human cells
Authored by Epitalon's originators with commercial peptide-bioregulator interest; no explicit COI disclosure.
Limits: In vitro only; originator-authored; cited link is paywalled (verified via Europe PMC, PMID 12937682).
- Independent
Al-dulaimi et al. 2025, Epitalon increases telomere length in human cell lines
Self-funded PhD students plus departmental support; authors declared no competing interests; not affiliated with Khavinson.
Limits: 2D culture only; qPCR averages telomere length; no in vivo or human validation; confirms cancer-cell lengthening via ALT.
- Industry-funded
Khavinson & Morozov 2003, Peptides of pineal gland and thymus prolong human life
Originator-authored; no COI disclosure; low-impact journal.
Limits: Sole basis for the human claim; abstract describes no blinding or placebo; implausibly large dose-escalating effects; never independently replicated.
- Funding unknown
Superpower regulatory and evidence status overview 2026
Commercial health-content site; cited only for regulatory and replication status, not efficacy; states it does not sell or compound Epitalon.
Limits: Secondary source; not efficacy evidence.
- Industry-funded
- Industry-funded
Wei et al. 2017, Sci Transl Med (pivotal RCT)
USC chair fund (Longo); FMD supplied by L-Nutra; Longo and a co-author held equity and recused from data collection/analysis; equity pledged to Create Cures.
Limits: Modest size, short term; key glucose/lipid/CRP cuts only in pooled/post hoc, not primary comparison.
- Industry-funded
Brandhorst et al. 2024, Nat Commun ('biological age')
Longo (senior author) founded L-Nutra; FMD is L-Nutra's ProLon; formulations belong to USC and L-Nutra. Full COI paragraph not extracted from page.
Limits: Surrogate blood-marker clock, not epigenetic; secondary endpoint; no active-CR comparator; no hard outcomes.
- Industry-funded
USC press release 2024
Issued by Longo's institution; USC discloses a financial interest in L-Nutra.
Limits: Source of 'rejuvenation' and 'biologically younger' framing; not independent evidence.
- Independent
Robbins, STAT News 2017
No industry funding of the reporting.
Limits: Documents the commercial conflict; quotes independent scientists noting weight loss may explain benefits and head-to-head human comparisons are lacking.
- Industry-funded
- EnvironmentalFluoride Misleading
- Independent
Cochrane review, water fluoridation for caries (2024)
Cochrane Oral Health; no commercial sponsorship.
Limits: Contemporary estimates from only 2-4 modern studies, low/very-low certainty (confounding, no blinding); CI crosses null.
- Independent
NTP monograph, fluoride and neurodevelopment (2024)
US government NIEHS/NTP; no industry funding.
Limits: Observational, mostly high-fluoride regions abroad; residual confounding; confidence capped at moderate (>1.5 mg/L) and insufficient at 0.7 mg/L.
- Independent
Cochrane plain-language summary (2024)
Cochrane Oral Health.
Limits: Summary only; reiterates that present-day benefit is small now toothpaste is widespread.
- Not applicable
Food & Water Watch v. EPA, district ruling (2024)
Court proceeding; not a funded study.
Limits: Used lower TSCA 'preponderance' bar; explicitly not a finding of injury; ordered review only.
- Not applicable
Ninth Circuit vacatur (May 2026)
Court proceeding; not a funded study.
Limits: Vacated on procedure; explicitly did not decide whether 0.7 mg/L poses unreasonable risk.
- Independent
- ProtocolsGary Brecka Misleading
- Independent
ACMG practice guideline (Hickey 2013)
Professional-society guideline (ACMG); no commercial sponsor.
Limits: Guideline, not new primary data; focused on thrombophilia/CHD endpoints.
- Independent
Homocysteine in the cardiovascular setting (2025 review)
Academic review of publicly funded RCTs; no industry sponsor identified.
Limits: Narrative, not a fresh meta-analysis; HOPE-2 did show a stroke-incidence drop though the primary CVD endpoint was null.
- Funding unknown
Methylfolate/folinic acid RCT in healthy adults (2023)
Funding not stated in abstract; treat as unverified.
Limits: Biomarker-only (homocysteine); no clinical or healthspan outcomes; short duration.
- Independent
MTHFR genetic-counseling review (Levin & Varga 2016)
Peer-reviewed journal; no industry sponsor identified.
Limits: Publisher full text paywalled; thrust confirmed via PubMed, exact quotes not verbatim-verified.
- Independent
- FrontierAnti-aging gene therapy Unsupported
- Independent
Bernardes de Jesus & Blasco, AAV9-TERT in mice (EMBO Mol Med, 2012)
Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO); authors declared no conflict
Limits: Mice only; lifespan DELAY not reversal; no-cancer result partly mouse-specific (post-adult dosing, non-integrating diluted vector).
- Independent
Zhang et al., telomere length and cancer, Mendelian randomization (Hum Mol Genet, 2015)
NCI/NIH (GAME-ON), Wellcome Trust, Australian NHMRC
Limits: Genetic-proxy, not interventional; informs causal cancer risk, not telomerase-therapy safety directly.
- Not applicable
Regalado, "Buyer beware of this $1M gene therapy for aging" (MIT Technology Review, 2019)
Independent journalism; subject venture was pay-to-participate ($1M/patient)
Limits: Reporting, not primary trial data; enrollment claims conflicted across sources.
- Independent
Gorski, $1M phase 1 anti-aging gene therapy critique (Science-Based Medicine, 2019)
Independent academic medical commentary
Limits: Commentary, not new data; argues phase 1 tests safety only, so charging $1M is unjustified.
- Not applicable
$1M anti-aging gene therapy raises ethical concerns (Genetic Literacy Project, 2019)
Republished excerpt of Emily Mullin's OneZero piece; corroborating, not original
Limits: Aggregation, not independent reporting; confirms offshore/pay-to-play but not the cancer caveat.
- Independent
- PeptidesGHK-Cu Mixed
- Industry-funded
Pickart & co. 2015 review (source of the 4,000-gene "reset")
Skin Biology affiliation; sells GHK.
Limits: The 4,000-gene figure is in-silico Connectivity Map matching, not validated in human tissue.
- Industry-funded
Pickart & Margolina 2018 review
Skin Biology; declares 'no conflict' despite commercializing GHK.
Limits: Reports 31.2% of genes affected via CMap (in-silico); human data limited to small topical creams.
- Independent
Dou et al. 2020 (independent UW review)
Univ. of Washington; NIA-funded, no Skin Biology tie.
Limits: Frames anti-aging as hypothesis; confirms human evidence limited to topical skin.
- Funding unknown
Leyden et al. 2002 facial-cream study
Authors reportedly industry-affiliated; not documented in the cited source.
Limits: Abstract only, no full RCT; favourable result.
- Industry-funded
Yuvan Research 2023 collagen-density study
Yuvan Research sells the tested gel.
Limits: Surrogate ultrasound endpoint; small n; unpublished.
- Industry-funded
- SupplementsGlyNAC Mixed
- Independent
Kumar 2021 open-label pilot (Sekhar/Baylor)
Funded by a philanthropic gift from the McNair Medical Institute. (No NIH/NIA grant is stated in this paper.) Lead author holds a GlyNAC patent.
Limits: Tiny, uncontrolled; benefits regressed after withdrawal; patent conflict not disclosed.
- Independent
Kumar 2023 randomized trial (Sekhar/Baylor), NCT01870193
NIH/NIA R01AG041782 + McNair gift (verified). COI stated 'None declared' despite Sekhar's GlyNAC patent: a material non-disclosure.
Limits: n=24; surrogate endpoints only; 'aging hallmarks' framing relabels biomarker shifts; single group.
- Industry-funded
Lizzo 2022 (Nestle), Frontiers in Aging
Funded by Nestle Health Science (markets glycine+NAC); ~6 of 9 authors Nestle employees; patents/licenses disclosed.
Limits: Null overall for glutathione/MDA; benefit only post-hoc subgroup; short 14-day duration may partly explain.
- Independent
Kumar 2022 mouse lifespan study (Sekhar/Baylor)
Stated as internal Baylor College of Medicine funding (not NIH/NIA or McNair). Same investigator patent conflict applies.
Limits: Mouse-only +~24% lifespan; does not establish any human lifespan or healthspan effect.
- Not applicable
US Patent 9,084,760 B2 (Sekhar / Baylor)
Granted 2015; claims combined glycine + N-acetylcysteine; Baylor licensed GlyNAC IP to Nestle Health Science.
Limits: Establishes the investigator's commercial interest; not disclosed in the pivotal 2023 trial.
- Independent
- Devices & therapiesGrounding Unproven
- Industry-funded
Ghaly & Teplitz 2004, cortisol & sleep
Tied to the Ober/Earthing Institute promotion network; full-text COI not verifiable at source.
Limits: No control group or blinding; sleep, pain, stress self-reported. Most-cited foundational study.
- Industry-funded
Chevalier 2013, blood viscosity
PubMed lists 'Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't'; same EarthFx-linked authors (Chevalier, Sinatra, Oschman).
Limits: Surrogate marker (RBC zeta potential) only; no clinical outcome; no control group; n=10.
- Industry-funded
Oschman 2015, inflammation review
Chevalier & Oschman are EarthFx contractors AND shareholders; Brown a contractor only. COI real for all three.
Limits: Asserts electron/antioxidant mechanism; authors concede pilots had 'relatively few subjects.'
- Funding unknown
Park et al. 2025, sleep RCT
Kyung Hee University; no external funding disclosed in abstract. More independent than EarthFx literature.
Limits: Subjective sleep/stress endpoints; pilot scale; makes NO anti-inflammatory or disease-modifying claim.
- Independent
Africa Check appraisal
Non-profit fact-checking organisation; consulted physicist Chad Orzel.
Limits: Secondary appraisal; concludes evidence insufficient, replication mixed (2010 positive vs 2015 null).
- Industry-funded
- Devices & therapiesHBOT Unproven
- Industry-funded
Hachmo et al. 2020, Aging (the pivotal trial)
Private Sagol-network grant. Per the paper's own disclosure, co-authors are employees of AVIV Scientific LTD and 'ES' (Efrati) is a shareholder, the company selling the anti-aging HBOT program the study markets. Direct seller conflict.
Limits: No control or sham group, no randomization, no blinding; small, high-attrition sample (~57% of enrollees analyzed for senescence); outcomes are surrogate markers in isolated blood cells only; no clinical, functional, or lifespan endpoint.
- Industry-funded
Tessema et al. 2022, Frontiers in Aging (systematic review)
Article processing charge funded by InterHypox e.V.; supported by CellAir Construction GmbH; one author (Egorov, 'EE') is co-owner of CellAir, a hyperoxia-equipment company. Seller-adjacent conflict.
Limits: Most included studies rated high/unclear risk of bias; concludes there is no direct research showing short-term hyperoxia increases human life expectancy; documents harms (visual acuity loss, barotrauma, mtDNA damage, cataract risk).
- Independent
Reason, Fight Aging! 2020 (independent critique)
Independent longevity-research commentator; no commercial stake in HBOT.
Limits: Commentary, not new data; argues immune-cell telomere length is a poor aging readout and that apparent changes likely reflect immune-cell population shifts rather than systemic rejuvenation.
- Independent
Schneider / Brown, For Better Science 2020 (statistical critique)
Independent science-integrity journalism; no commercial interest in HBOT.
Limits: Critique, not new data; flags non-independent subset comparisons ('Table 1 is absurd'), unreconciled participant counts, and inconsistent exclusion of low-quality samples (4 vs 10) from identical preparations.
- Not applicable
Gulf News 2021 (money-trail report)
Mainstream news outlet; cited to document the commercial product, not as scientific evidence.
Limits: Documents the Dubai clinic launch of a 60-session anti-aging HBOT program under Efrati's scientific leadership; reports treatment cost 'typically within $80,000'; does not establish a Florida site or any clinical outcome.
- Industry-funded
- HormonesHuman growth hormone (HGH) Misleading
- Independent
Liu 2007, systematic review of GH in healthy elderly
NIH (NIA) / AHRQ; no industry conflict.
Limits: Trials short (months), powered for body composition, not clinical outcomes.
- Independent
Blackman 2002, GH +/- sex steroids RCT
NIH/NIA intramural and academic.
Limits: Short; strength gains absent in women; high adverse-event rates.
- Independent
Perls 2005, clinical-legal commentary
NIH/NIA-supported academics; lead author a known industry critic.
Limits: Commentary, not a trial; legal facts cite the statute.
- Independent
Laron-syndrome cohorts (low IGF-1)
Academic/foundation-funded; no GH-industry sponsor.
Limits: Small, specific populations; protected from disease but did not outlive relatives on average.
- Independent
- DietDietary protein Mixed
- Funding unknown
Bauer 2013 PROT-AGE position paper
EUGMS-appointed group; individual author industry ties common in this field but not extracted.
Limits: Extrapolates from mechanistic and short-term functional data; no long-outcome RCTs at these intakes.
- Independent
Volkert 2019 ESPEN geriatric guideline
ESPEN professional-society process.
Limits: At-least-1.0 g/kg/day figure lives in full-text recommendations, not the abstract; consensus, not trial outcome.
- Independent
Levine 2014 (NHANES III + mice)
Academic/USC-Longo, NIH/foundation; Longo has commercial ties to ProLon/L-Nutra aligned with a restriction message.
Limits: Single 24-hour recall; animal protein confounded by red/processed meat and lifestyle; also showed ~5x diabetes-mortality rise at all ages.
- Industry-funded
Devries 2018 kidney meta-analysis
Senior author Phillips disclosed dairy- and beef-industry funding; favorable conclusion warrants scrutiny though consistent with literature.
Limits: Short trials; applies only to normal kidney function, not chronic kidney disease.
- Independent
Science Media Centre expert reaction
Collates independent academic commentary.
Limits: Commentary, not new data; critiques the strength of the Levine harm signal.
- Funding unknown
- ProtocolsMorning sunlight Supported
- Independent
St Hilaire et al. 2012, human phase response curve to a 1 h bright-light pulse
NIH/NIMH, NHLBI, NASA/NSBRI, Wellcome Trust; authors declared no conflicts related to the work.
Limits: Single 1 h pulse at ~8,300 lux under controlled dim-light lab conditions; small n; not a real-world outdoor exposure.
- Independent
Khalsa et al. 2003, phase response curve to single bright light pulses
NIH grants (incl. NIMH R01-MH45130, NHLBI); academic/public funding, no product sponsor.
Limits: High-intensity (~10,000 lux) pulses of ~6.7 h, far longer/brighter than a brief outdoor glance; intensive small cohort.
- Independent
Czeisler 1995, the effect of light on the human circadian pacemaker (review)
NIH grants (NIA, NIMH); public/academic funding, no product sponsor.
Limits: Narrative/review synthesis establishing light as primary zeitgeber; not a single dose-response trial.
- Independent
Perera, Eisen, Bhatt, Bhatnagar, de Souza, Thabane, Samaan 2016, light therapy for non-seasonal depression (meta-analysis)
Senior author supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research and a Brain & Behavior Research Foundation grant; declared no conflicts.
Limits: Substantial heterogeneity (I-squared=60%); high risk of bias (only ~5/21 low risk); blinding of bright light intrinsically hard; population is clinically depressed, not healthy.
- Industry-funded
Siraji et al. 2022, daytime electric light, alertness and cognition (systematic review)
Supported by a research grant from ITRAMAS Corporation, a lighting manufacturer; authors declared no competing commercial relationship.
Limits: Heterogeneous designs; subjective alertness improved in ~65% but objective in only ~31% of studies; industry-funding flag noted; tempers rather than confirms the alertness claim.
- Funding unknown
He, Ru, Li, Li, Zhou 2023, morning bright light improves nocturnal sleep and next-morning alertness in college students
No funding or conflict-of-interest statement visible in the abstract record.
Limits: Very small n; 1.5 h dose (about 90x the prescribed glance); objective sleep measures significant but several self-rated measures were not.
- Independent
Nussbaumer-Streit et al. 2019, light therapy for preventing seasonal affective disorder (Cochrane review)
Cochrane methodology; no product sponsor for the review itself.
Limits: Only one small prevention trial; evidence rated very low; no firm conclusion on prevention possible (treatment of active SAD is separately well established).
- Not applicable
Huberman Lab sponsors page and ROKA partnership (primary commercial disclosure)
Claimant's own commercial relationships (AG1, Eight Sleep, Helix, WHOOP, LMNT, Joovv, ROKA); relevant to conflict-of-interest transparency, not evidence for the claim.
Limits: Not scientific evidence; documents the money trail only. No equity/ownership stake verifiable from the sources reviewed.
- Independent
- Independent
TREAT RCT (Lowe 2020)
NIH/NIDDK. Authors held Keyto/Virta ties that would favour fasting, yet the result was null, which strengthens it.
Limits: Short; modest size; ~65% of the small weight loss was lean mass (P=0.005).
- Independent
CR with/without TRE (Liu 2022, NEJM)
Chinese public research grants; no industry weight-loss sponsor.
Limits: Single-centre; only early (8am-4pm) window; primary URL paywalled, numbers confirmed via PubMed.
- Independent
IF vs continuous CR meta-analysis (He 2022)
Chinese public foundations; no diet-industry funding.
Limits: Heterogeneous protocols; short trials; tiny weight advantage of uncertain clinical value.
- Independent
Early TRE feeding trial (Sutton 2018)
NIH grants; academic, no diet-product sponsor.
Limits: Only 8 men; early window only; not replicated at scale.
- Independent
Autophagy flux analysis (Bensalem 2025)
Australia NHMRC and Diabetes Australia; public/academic.
Limits: Surrogate blood-cell marker; within-group null; exploratory; no outcome link.
- Funding unknown
NHANES 8-hour window and CV death (Zhong 2024, AHA abstract)
Conference abstract; funding not disclosed.
Limits: Diet from two days of recall; reverse causation and confounding likely; not peer-reviewed.
- Independent
- IV therapyIV vitamin drips Unsupported
- Independent
Ali et al. 2009 - Myers' cocktail RCT (fibromyalgia)
US NIH/NCCAM grants R21AT000942 and F32AT00667; authors declared no competing interests.
Limits: Tiny pilot; single condition; primary outcome null (between-group p=0.60 / 0.39); both arms improved similarly, consistent with placebo response.
- Industry-funded
Suh et al. 2012 - IV vitamin C and fatigue
Korean Association for Vitamin Research; two authors held leadership/membership roles in the funding body (sponsor stated to have no role).
Limits: Subjective 0-10 endpoint; effect confined to LOW-baseline-vitamin-C subgroup (p=0.004) with none in adequate-baseline (p=0.206); single infusion, short follow-up; unreplicated; no oral comparator, so cannot test IV-vs-diet.
- Independent
Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin 2023 - evidence review
Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin (BMJ), editorially independent, advertising-free; none declared.
Limits: Narrative, not a meta-analysis; reflects scarcity of primary trials rather than a pooled effect estimate.
- Independent
Alangari 2025 (Cureus) - narrative review of IV vitamin therapy
Author declares no financial support, financial relationships or conflicts of interest.
Limits: Narrative, not a systematic review/meta-analysis; catalogues risks and the unstandardized formulations but pools no primary data.
- Independent
CSPI/A4PC 2025 (JAMA Internal Medicine) - state oversight of IV hydration spas
Center for Science in the Public Interest and Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding; published as a JAMA Internal Medicine research letter; no stake in selling drips.
Limits: Documents the regulatory gap, not clinical efficacy; policy snapshot as of mid-2024.
- Independent
- DietKetogenic diet Mixed
- Independent
Cochrane review, keto for drug-resistant epilepsy
Academic Cochrane synthesis; no dominant industry sponsor among included trials.
Limits: All trials unblinded, high risk of bias; certainty low to very low; adults showed no seizure freedom.
- Independent
Newman/Verdin, keto in aging mice
NIH grants plus Glenn/AFAR/Hillblom foundations; no commercial COI.
Limits: Cyclic diet to avoid obesity; reduced midlife mortality but NO maximum-lifespan gain; male mice only.
- Independent
Roberts et al., keto extends longevity in mice
NIH (NIDDK/NIA) grants; no commercial COI captured.
Limits: Increased median lifespan only; exact effect size not in abstract; male mice only.
- Industry-funded
Virta Health continuous-care trial, type 2 diabetes
Sponsored by Virta Health, which sells a keto diabetes program; most authors employed/with stock.
Limits: Non-randomized, self-selected; shows metabolic benefit, not longevity; direct commercial COI.
- Industry-funded
KETO-CTA, LDL and plaque in hyper-responders
Crowd-funded via Citizen Science Foundation, led by low-carb advocate Dave Feldman.
Limits: No control arm, only 1 year; does not overturn the ApoB-cardiovascular evidence base.
- Independent
- Funding unknown
Mah & Pitre 2021, oral magnesium for insomnia (systematic review)
No funding stated; COI 'none declared.' Academic clinicians, no obvious industry sponsor.
Limits: All trials moderate-to-high risk of bias; certainty low to very low; authors call the literature 'substandard.'
- Independent
Fang 2016, dietary magnesium and mortality (dose-response meta-analysis)
Chinese government foundations (National Natural Science Foundation; Zhejiang Provincial). Not industry.
Limits: Dietary intake (food questionnaires), not supplements; total CVD and CHD non-significant; residual confounding precludes causal inference.
- Funding unknown
von Luckner & Riederer 2018, magnesium for migraine prophylaxis (systematic review)
Academic neurology review; no industry sponsor identified.
Limits: Mixed results; only Grade C ('possibly effective'); high dose (~600 mg/day dicitrate). A narrow, separate use from sleep/longevity.
- Industry-funded
Lopresti & Smith 2026, magnesium L-threonate (Magtein) on cognition and sleep (RCT)
Funded by Threotech Inc., the Magtein manufacturer, which supplied the product and helped design the study; lead author directs the contract research organisation. Clear conflict of interest.
Limits: Short, small, surrogate-heavy; improved subjective sleep (p=0.043) but NO objective (Oura) sleep gain; markets a '~7.5-year cognitive age' figure.
- Independent
Papagiannidou 2026, hypomagnesemia clinical & nutritional update (review)
Academic review drawing on government survey (NHANES); no industry funding.
Limits: Clinically measured hypomagnesemia ~1.5-15%; up to ~48% of US adults below estimated average requirement; serum poorly reflects total-body stores, so true deficit prevalence is uncertain.
- Funding unknown
- ProtocolsMark Hyman Misleading
- Industry-funded
Cleveland Clinic FM cohort (JAMA Netw Open 2019)
Center evaluated its own model; one author took fees from Cleveland HeartLab Inc., another was a paid Institute for Functional Medicine consultant/teacher.
Limits: Sub-threshold 6mo gain; non-significant at 12mo (P=.41); ~14% retention; conceded nonresponse bias.
- Independent
Gorski, Science-Based Medicine (2018)
Independent science-advocacy publication; no commercial stake.
Limits: Commentary, not primary data; argues FM tests are not evidence-based.
- Independent
Jarry, McGill OSS (2020)
University science-outreach office; no commercial stake.
Limits: Commentary; argues 'root cause' framing is 'an alluring falsehood.'
- Not applicable
Function Health (company/financial record)
For-profit firm Hyman co-founded; documents the money trail, not clinical efficacy.
Limits: Not clinical evidence; establishes a testing-and-supplement incentive.
- Industry-funded
- DietMediterranean diet Supported
- Mixed funding
PREDIMED (republished RCT, primary prevention)
Mainly Spanish public funding; olive oil and nuts donated by food companies, reportedly no sponsor role in design.
Limits: Powered for events, not mortality; high-risk Spanish population; low-fat control was poorly adhered.
- Independent
Harvard Nutrition Source: retraction/republication explainer
Academic public-health institution; no commercial funding.
Limits: Secondary summary, not primary data.
- Independent
Sofi 2008 meta-analysis (cohorts)
Authors declared 'Funding: None' and no competing interests.
Limits: Observational; residual confounding and healthy-user bias.
- Funding unknown
Lyon Diet Heart Study (secondary prevention)
Academic/public-sector trial per dossier; funding not shown on source page.
Limits: Small; older trial; funding not directly verifiable from the cited page.
- Mixed funding
- DrugsMetformin Unproven
- Funding unknown
Bannister 2014, UK CPRD observational cohort
Often cited as AstraZeneca/Bristol-Myers Squibb funded; PubMed lists only 'Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't' and the publisher disclosure is paywalled. Industry funding asserted on secondary sources only, not independently verified.
Limits: Observational; healthy-user, prevalent-user and indication bias; comparison structure cannot establish lifespan extension. Authors themselves caution against an anti-aging reading.
- Independent
Strong 2016, NIA Interventions Testing Program (mice)
US National Institute on Aging (AG013319, AG022303/07/08, AG024824). No industry funding.
Limits: Animal model; dosing/timing differs from human protocols. Note: combo benefit vs rapamycin alone was not statistically significant (P=0.12), so 'attributable to rapamycin' is suggestive, not proven.
- Mixed funding
Konopka 2019, exercise-adaptation RCT
Dairy Management Inc. and Dexcom Inc.; authors declared no conflicts. Not funded by metformin makers and funders had no stake in a negative result, strengthens credibility.
Limits: Small (n=53); the VO2max attenuation did not reach significance (p=0.08). Suggestive signal of harm, not definitive.
- Funding unknown
Mohammed 2021, critical review
Funding not stated in accessed text; authors academic pharmacologists (Weill Cornell-Qatar / U Calgary).
Limits: Narrative synthesis, not primary data. Concludes the human lifespan-extension evidence in disease-free people 'remains controversial.'
- Mixed funding
AFAR, TAME trial (status)
Coordinated by AFAR; reliant on philanthropy and NIH negotiations. No results to bias; listed for status only.
Limits: Not launched; no data. Documents why high-quality human evidence is absent.
- Independent
de Jager 2010 (HOME trial), B12 outcome
Investigator-led HOME trial. Demonstrates harm, so no favourable-sponsor concern.
Limits: Conducted in diabetics; absolute risk-benefit in healthy non-diabetics is inferred. B12 fell ~19%; absolute deficiency risk rose ~7 percentage points.
- Funding unknown
Infante 2021, B12 safety review
Authors Infante M, Leoni M, Caprio M, Fabbri A; declared no competing interests; no funding stated.
Limits: Review, not primary data; corroborates GI intolerance and long-term B12 depletion but does not itself report the 19%/7pp figures (those are de Jager's).
- Funding unknown
- SupplementsMethylene blue Unproven
- Independent
Rodriguez 2016, Radiology: single-dose fMRI RCT
NIH grants (NIA, NCATS); no commercial sponsor.
Limits: Tiny n, single acute dose, imaging/short-task surrogate; no durable or 'energy' endpoint.
- Funding unknown
Yang/Liu 2015, Prog Neurobiol: mechanism review
No funding/COI captured.
Limits: Predominantly preclinical; human Alzheimer's data flagged as methodologically weak.
- Independent
Ramsay 2007, Br J Pharmacol: MAO-A inhibition
Authors declared no conflict of interest.
Limits: Biochemical basis for serotonin toxicity, not a clinical outcome study.
- Mixed funding
Xue 2021, Cells: anti-aging review
NIH R01HL126784; author K.C. founded skincare firm Mblue Labs (conflict for skin/aging claims).
Limits: Anti-aging evidence cell/animal; Alzheimer's phase 3 (LMTM) inconclusive; no human lifespan proof.
- Independent
Xiong 2017, Sci Rep: skin anti-aging
Maryland Innovative Initiative; this paper declares no competing interests.
Limits: Surrogate, cosmetic-level; no living-volunteer or systemic longevity data.
- Independent
- Funding unknown
Leslie 2022, plastic in human blood
Indexed as non-commercial academic; specific funder not stated in abstract.
Limits: Detection only; makes no health-harm claim; funder not visible.
- Funding unknown
Ragusa 2021, "Plasticenta"
Indexed 'Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't'; no commercial conflict identified.
Limits: Very small n; detection only; one fragment confirmed polypropylene, rest pigment-identified.
- Independent
Marfella 2024, microplastics in atheroma
Academic (Univ. of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli); reported not industry-funded.
Limits: Association only; possible sample contamination; residual confounding; full text paywalled, figures from PubMed/secondary reporting.
- Independent
WHO, microplastics risk assessment
WHO; no commercial interest.
Limits: Concludes evidence base is limited and insufficient for firm toxicity conclusions.
- Mixed funding
Bornstein 2025, apheresis proof-of-concept
Part NIH (R21 MH126405) but several authors affiliated with commercial apheresis providers (INUS, TKM, Transmedac).
Limits: Detects particles in discarded eluate only; no tissue-burden reduction; no clinical outcome.
- Industry-funded
Weinstein 2026, plasma exchange (peer-reviewed)
Authors affiliated with Circulate Health, which sells plasma-exchange services.
Limits: Lowers circulating counts only, not tissue burden; no clinical benefit; reduction obscured by plastic leaching from the apheresis tubing.
- Funding unknown
- IV therapyNAD+ IV Unsupported
- Funding unknown
2026 PRISMA systematic review, NAD+ for anti-aging/wellness (Gallagher & Emmanuel, Ageing Res Rev)
Funding not displayed; lead author's disclosed commercial tie is to an aesthetics clinic that does NOT sell NAD+ products, so the review leans independent of NAD+ sellers. Treat funding as unverified.
Limits: Synthesis, not a primary trial; full text could not be fetched first-party (verified via abstract and PubMed PMID 41655607). Conclusion of 'limited/no controlled IV outcomes evidence' is load-bearing and corroborated by the seller-side RCT.
- Industry-funded
Only IV NAD+ RCT, ChromaDex/Niagen acute pilot (2024 preprint)
Conducted by ChromaDex (now Niagen Bioscience) on its own competing NR-based IV; several authors are ChromaDex employees; sponsored via Franklin Health Research.
Limits: Unrefereed preprint; measured only acute blood NAD+ and safety, no aging, energy, fatigue, or repair endpoint. NAD+ IV raised blood NAD+ LESS than the sponsor's NR IV.
- Industry-funded
2019 human pharmacokinetic pilot, 6-hour NAD+ infusion (Grant et al.)
Funded by NAD+ Research Inc.; co-author/director R. Mestayer is medical director of the Springfield Wellness Center, which sells IV NAD+ as a clinical therapy (disclosed COI).
Limits: Tiny, short, acute; no efficacy/aging/energy endpoint. Plasma NAD+ flat for first 2h then +398%, with breakdown metabolites rising in parallel, degradation signature. No adverse events in this slow 6h protocol.
- Industry-funded
2026 Restore clinic retrospective, IV NAD+ vs NR tolerability (Reyna et al., Front Aging)
Funded by Restore Hyper Wellness; NR product donated by Niagen Biosciences; multiple authors employed by Restore (bias acknowledged in the paper).
Limits: No placebo; not designed to show efficacy. All 6 NAD+ patients had moderate-to-severe GI/cardiac side effects; mean NAD+ infusion ~97 min vs ~37 min for NR. Fatigue/QoL surveys were collected but not analyzed or reported as efficacy.
- Independent
Independent uncertainties review, NAD+ boosting strategies (Poljsak et al., Antioxidants 2022)
Funded by the Slovenian Research Agency (P3-0388, P3-0019); authors declare no conflict of interest, the genuine non-commercial counterweight.
Limits: Narrative, not systematic; but the central point holds, bioavailability, metabolism and tissue specificity of NAD+ boosters are unresolved, and there are no long-term human safety trials.
- Mixed funding
Clinical-evidence review, targeting NAD therapeutically (Radenkovic, Reason, Verdin, Pharmaceuticals 2020)
No external funding reported; authors disclose commercial interests in NAD-related ventures (longevity institute, Repair Biotechnologies, Napa Therapeutics/Seneque).
Limits: Narrative review; relevant point is that historical human IV NAD/NADH data are sparse and confined to disease populations, and infused NAD/NADH is likely cleaved before cellular uptake.
- Independent
NPR/KPBS reporting with named experts (Aubrey, 2026)
Public-radio reporting; the key disconfirming quote ('no easy door,' 'very inefficient') is from Restore's own CSO and cuts against her commercial interest.
Limits: Journalism, not a study; used for verbatim expert statements and documented pricing ($200–$1,000+/session), not as primary efficacy evidence.
- Industry-funded
ChromaDex/Niagen commercial disclosures (BioSpace, 2024)
Primary commercial source (the seller); used only to establish the verifiable money trail, never as evidence of efficacy.
Limits: Marketing/financial material. Some figures (1,200+ clinics, 200+ Restore locations, ~$129.4M 2025 net sales) come from later ChromaDex releases, not this June-2024 page, see human-checks.
- Funding unknown
- SupplementsNicotinamide riboside Misleading
- Industry-funded
Martens 2018, healthy middle-aged/older adults
ChromaDex-linked program supplied NIAGEN; NR-supportive Seals lab.
Limits: BP and aortic-stiffness signals exploratory only; authors called for future trials. Full disclosure sits in paywalled Nature text, not the PubMed page.
- Industry-funded
Elhassan 2019, aged men (median 75y)
ChromaDex provided NR/placebo; Brenner discloses patents, stock and advisory role.
Limits: Blood NAD+ rose >2-fold but muscle NAD+ did not (p=0.22); all functional endpoints null (grip p=0.96); cytokine drop partly baseline-relative.
- Mixed funding
Remie 2020, healthy overweight/obese adults
Dutch Heart Foundation and EU Horizon 2020 funded; ChromaDex supplied NIAGEN with no design role.
Limits: Insulin sensitivity and mitochondrial function null; only minor body-composition and acetylcarnitine shifts; 'no other metabolic health effects.'
- Independent
Brakedal 2022, NADPARK, newly diagnosed Parkinson's
Academic Norwegian trial, no industry sponsor.
Limits: Raised cerebral NAD+ but only a subset showed 'mild' clinical change; explicitly hypothesis-generating, not disease modification or anti-aging proof.
- Mixed funding
Freeberg 2022, phase IIa blood-pressure trial (protocol only)
NIH grants fund the work; ChromaDex supplied NIAGEN via material transfer agreement.
Limits: Only the protocol is published; no primary results located, so the cardiovascular claim remains untested at the outcome level.
- Industry-funded
- Independent
VITAL
US NIH (NCI, NHLBI); product donated by Pronova/BASF; investigator-led.
Limits: Null primary endpoint; the MI and subgroup signals (low fish-eaters, Black participants) are secondary, hypothesis-generating only.
- Independent
ASCEND
Coordinated by Oxford; British Heart Foundation and others; not industry-controlled.
Limits: Null result; olive-oil placebo. Tested only one low dose in diabetics.
- Industry-funded
REDUCE-IT
Funded by Amarin, which sells icosapent ethyl (Vascepa); direct interest in a positive result.
Limits: Mineral-oil placebo was not biologically inert (raised LDL/apoB/CRP in controls), confounding the 25% benefit; never replicated.
- Industry-funded
STRENGTH
Funded by AstraZeneca; its own product (Epanova) failed, a null against the sponsor's interest.
Limits: Stopped early for futility; same high dose as REDUCE-IT but null, plus an atrial-fibrillation harm signal.
- Independent
Cochrane review 2020
Cochrane / NIHR; no commercial sponsor; gold-standard synthesis.
Limits: Small CV-mortality signal (RR 0.92) only moderate certainty and not matched by all-cause mortality.
- Independent
- Devices & therapiesOzone therapy Unsupported
- Not applicable
21 CFR 801.415, US federal ozone regulation
US federal regulation.
Limits: A regulatory position, not an outcome trial; sets the legal/scientific baseline that ozone has no recognised medical use.
- Funding unknown
Diabetic foot ulcer systematic review and meta-analysis (2024)
Funding/COI not disclosed in the accessible record.
Limits: Adjunct only; does not beat standard care for complete ulcer resolution; high heterogeneity. Risk-of-bias detail not confirmable from abstract.
- Industry-funded
Frontiers evidence and gap map of ozone as integrative medicine (2022)
Authors affiliated with advocacy bodies SOBOM and WFOT despite a 'no conflict' statement; favourable conclusions discounted.
Limits: Only 9/26 reviews high quality; signal limited to pain/wounds; wound results not superior to conventional care.
- Not applicable
Cerebral gas embolism and ischemic stroke during oxygen-ozone therapy (2024)
Case report; no funding relevant.
Limits: Single case; cannot establish incidence, but documents real embolic-stroke harm via patent foramen ovale during intradiscal ozone.
- Independent
Ozone therapy, encyclopedic synthesis of FDA/ACS positions and German 1975-1983 harm series
Tertiary source aggregating regulatory and peer-reviewed primary data.
Limits: Harm data observational with no denominator; shows deaths and strokes occur but not their frequency.
- Not applicable
- Mixed funding
Ocampo et al. 2016, Cell (cyclic OSKM)
Salk/Izpisua Belmonte; NIH P30 CA014195. Izpisua Belmonte later joined Altos Labs.
Limits: No human in vivo data; continuous OSKM caused teratomas, prompting cyclic dosing.
- Mixed funding
Lu et al. 2020, Nature (AAV-OSK, vision)
NIH (R01 EY021526, R37 AG028730, R01 AG019719). Major COI: Sinclair holds equity/patents (Iduna/Life Biosciences).
Limits: Single tissue; human work in vitro only; authors' commercial stakes.
- Mixed funding
Paine, Nguyen and Ocampo 2024, Aging Cell (review)
Ocampo lab, Univ. of Lausanne; co-author also affiliated with EPITERNA SA, a longevity company (commercial tie).
Limits: Narrative review, not new data; documents clock-vs-function disconnect and safety barriers.
- Funding unknown
Fight Aging! 2026 field summary
Advocacy outlet summarizing peer-reviewed challenges.
Limits: Weaker than a primary paper; corroborates that brief induction can still cause dedifferentiation/teratomas.
- Mixed funding
- Devices & therapiesPEMF Mixed
- Independent
Peng et al., Bioelectromagnetics 2020, bone-healing meta-analysis
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 81572231), a government funder; non-industry.
Limits: Heterogeneous field parameters; very-low-quality evidence for healing time; positive healing-rate result drawn from a subset, not all 22 studies.
- Independent
EJPRM 2024, bone-fracture systematic review update
Authors declared no conflict of interest with any financial organization.
Limits: Small pool; contradictory pain results; recommends against routine PEMF for acute fractures.
- Not applicable
FDA 510(k) clearance summary (secondary source)
Commercial rehab retailer page, not a primary regulatory record.
Limits: Confirms only the general framing (1979 clearance for non-union; adjunct post-op edema/pain). Specific device names and 510(k) numbers are NOT on this page and remain unverified against the FDA database.
- Funding unknown
Yang et al., J Rehabil Med 2019, knee-OA meta-analysis
No funding or conflict statement visible on the abstract.
Limits: No significant pain or stiffness benefit; only physical function improved; parameter heterogeneity.
- Funding unknown
Vavken et al., J Rehabil Med 2009, knee-OA meta-analysis
No funding or conflict statement visible on the abstract.
Limits: Null on pain and stiffness; authors frame a functional adjuvant role positively, which sellers can overstate.
- Funding unknown
Zhongguo Gu Shang 2012, knee-OA systematic review (Cochrane-method)
No funding or conflict statement visible.
Limits: Little clinical benefit for pain; authors call for larger, more powerful trials; not authored by the Cochrane Collaboration.
- Industry-funded
HigherDOSE / Upgrade Labs, seller and biohacker longevity claims
Commercial PEMF retailer/biohacking brand; direct conflict of interest.
Limits: Source of the anti-aging messaging; contains no primary human longevity data; cited as claimant evidence, not scientific evidence.
- Independent
- SupplementsQuercetin Unproven
- Mixed funding
Hickson 2019, D+Q in diabetic kidney disease
NIH plus non-profit foundations; key authors declared a financial interest and Mayo Clinic holds senolytic patents.
Limits: Tiny, open-label, no placebo, 3-day dosing; D+Q combined; surrogate markers only, no aging endpoint.
- Independent
Justice 2019, D+Q in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis
States no pharmaceutical or for-profit funding (NIH plus foundations), but authors declared a financial interest and Mayo holds senolytic patents.
Limits: Tiny, open-label, single-arm, 3 weeks; D+Q combined; no lung-function benefit; physical function only.
- Not applicable
NCT02848131 trial registry record
Registry record; lead sponsor Mayo Clinic. Cited only to confirm the combination design.
Limits: Not an outcome study; confirms intervention is dasatinib PLUS quercetin, not standalone quercetin.
- Industry-funded
Quercetin formulation pharmacokinetics in healthy adults
Funded by Factors Group; compares a proprietary enhanced quercetin to standard quercetin.
Limits: Reports relative absorption (7-15x) and 0.01 mg/mL solubility, not an absolute bioavailability figure; PK only.
- Mixed funding
- DrugsRapamycin Unproven
- Independent
Harrison 2009, Nature (NIA ITP)
NIA grants + US Dept of Veterans Affairs; no industry.
Limits: Mouse data only; says nothing directly about humans.
- Independent
Miller 2014, Aging Cell (NIA ITP)
NIA Interventions Testing Program; no industry sponsor.
Limits: Mouse data only; effect dose- and sex-dependent; high exposure unlike tolerable human dosing.
- Industry-funded
Mannick 2014, Sci Transl Med
Novartis-sponsored; authors Novartis-affiliated. Favourable surrogate, flagged.
Limits: Surrogate endpoint (vaccine response) only; no healthspan or lifespan outcome.
- Industry-funded
resTORbio PROTECTOR 1, Phase 3 (2019)
Funded by resTORbio (Novartis-derived). Negative pivotal result; program halted.
Limits: Endpoint was respiratory infection, not aging; OR 1.07, p=0.65.
- Industry-funded
PEARL trial, Aging (Albany NY) 2025
Run by AgelessRx employees/shareholders (sells rapamycin); crowdfunded. Conflict flagged.
Limits: Primary endpoint (visceral fat) missed, p=0.942; positive findings are secondary/self-reported; no mortality endpoint.
- Independent
- DietRaw milk Misleading
- Independent
Costard 2017, CDC outbreak risk model
USDA grant plus Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station; public/academic, no industry money. Finding is unfavorable to raw milk.
Limits: 840x is a modeled per-unit rate ratio with a wide credible interval, not a direct headcount; the large-excess-risk conclusion is solid.
- Industry-funded
Mummah 2014, raw milk and lactose intolerance RCT
Funded in part by the Weston A. Price Foundation, a pro-raw-milk group; a null result from a friendly funder is especially credible.
Limits: Small pilot (n=16); blinded design and funder direction make the null persuasive.
- Independent
Macdonald 2011, pasteurization and milk vitamins meta-analysis
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (public); not industry-funded.
Limits: Allergy-protection signal was observational and confounded; no support for cancer or lactose benefit.
- Not applicable
AAP fact-check on raw milk
Pediatric medical society; no commercial funding.
Limits: Authoritative synthesis rather than a primary study.
- Independent
- Not applicable
FDA 510(k) K103368, HairMax LaserComb (Lexington International), 2011
FDA database record; device made and sold by Lexington International, the seller.
Limits: 510(k) substantial-equivalence pathway (Class II), reflects safety + a clinical signal, not drug-level proof of efficacy.
- Independent
Liu et al., Lasers Med Sci, 2019, LLLT for androgenetic alopecia
Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology grant (MOST 107-2314-B-038-052); not industry-funded. Pooled trials still include manufacturer-run device studies.
Limits: Pooled trials short (~16–26 wk); large effect (SMD 1.316, 95% CI 0.993–1.639) but device type did not change effectiveness; durability and severe-loss effect untested.
- Independent
Gupta et al., J Cosmet Laser Ther, 2018, LLLT for hair loss
Independent review; explicitly calls for 'independent funding sources,' flagging that primary trials are sponsor-linked.
Limits: Positive vs sham but warns results 'must be interpreted with caution'; primary trials small, short, often manufacturer-run.
- Independent
DermNet, low-dose laser therapy for hair loss
Non-commercial dermatology education resource.
Limits: Narrative summary; notes physicians disagree, trials criticised as not independent, anecdotal results 'disappointing.'
- Industry-funded
Wunsch & Matuschka, Photomed Laser Surg, 2014, red/NIR for skin
'Fully funded by JK-Holding GmbH,' the device maker; PI 'mandated and remunerated by the sponsor'; co-author from JK-International.
Limits: Sponsor-funded and sponsor-authored; surrogate skin endpoints; single trial; downgraded for conflict.
- Industry-funded
Couturaud et al., Skin Res Technol, 2023, Dior/Lucibel LED mask
Authors include Lucibel's CEO and a Lucibel consultant, plus Parfum Christian Dior staff who sell the mask.
Limits: No control/placebo; tiny n; large headline numbers (38% / 48%) likely overstate real-world effect; near-zero evidentiary weight.
- Funding unknown
Mota et al., Photobiomodul Photomed Laser Surg, 2023, periocular wrinkles
Brazilian academic authorship; funding/COI not visible in the abstract and full text paywalled, unverified.
Limits: Compares two active wavelengths with no true placebo; shows light does something, not superiority to sham; drew a published critical response.
- Independent
Carolina-Alves et al., Int J Mol Sci, 2024, PBM in dermatology
Academic review; no manufacturer funding indicated (funding line not located on the page).
Limits: Concludes skin studies 'not numerous,' protocols 'varied,' standardized recommendations 'lacking'; makes no longevity claim.
- Independent
Quirk & Whelan, Photobiomodul Photomed Laser Surg, 2020, CCO mechanism review
Academic (Medical College of Wisconsin); supported by neurology endowments, no device-industry funding.
Limits: A perspective within an active debate, not a final word; finds no reliable demonstration of a light effect on cytochrome c oxidase.
- Not applicable
- SupplementsResveratrol Unsupported
- Mixed funding
Baur/Sinclair, Nature 2006
NIH (NIA/NIGMS) funded; authors declared competing interests; Sinclair co-founded Sirtris to commercialize it.
Limits: Survival benefit only vs overfed controls (HR 0.69); no extension vs standard diet (HR 1.03, p=0.88). Not healthy-lifespan extension.
- Industry-funded
Pacholec et al. (Pfizer), JBC 2010
Pfizer Global R&D; industry-funded but adverse to the resveratrol/Sirtris hypothesis.
Limits: Mechanism study, not a clinical outcome trial; a minority allosteric/substrate-specific model is still debated.
- Mixed funding
Yoshino/Klein, Cell Metab 2012
NIH + Longer Life Foundation; resveratrol supplied by DSM (one author employed there); a co-author on Sirtris SAB; still null.
Limits: Small, short, single population; surrogate metabolic endpoints, not aging or mortality.
- Independent
Walle et al., Drug Metab Dispos 2004
Academic (MUSC), NIH-supported; no supplement-industry sponsorship.
Limits: Tiny n; single low dose; measures exposure, not clinical effect.
- Independent
Zhou et al., Front Physiol 2022
Chinese public/academic grants; no commercial conflicts reported.
Limits: Fasting glucose non-significant (p=0.14); extreme heterogeneity (I2 81 to 94%); publication bias; no aging/longevity endpoint.
- Mixed funding
- ProtocolsRhonda Patrick Mixed
- Independent
Laukkanen KIHD sauna cohort (JAMA Intern Med 2015)
Non-U.S. government research support; no industry sponsor.
Limits: Observational; residual confounding; one research group.
- Independent
Kunutsor/Laukkanen sauna cohort (BMC Medicine 2018)
Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research; non-commercial.
Limits: Observational; overlaps same Finnish program.
- Independent
VITAL omega-3 RCT (NEJM 2019; PMID 30415637)
NIH/NHLBI funded; supplements donated but trial run independently.
Limits: Replete population dilutes any deficiency benefit; null primary endpoint.
- Mixed funding
Omega-3 RCT update incl. REDUCE-IT (Cardiovasc Res 2023)
Review by VITAL investigators; REDUCE-IT sponsored by Amarin.
Limits: Pharmaceutical 4 g/day dose, secondary-prevention only; sponsor flag.
- Independent
Alumkal sulforaphane prostate trial (PMC4390425)
Kuni Foundation, Prostate Cancer Foundation, NIH; non-commercial.
Limits: Missed primary endpoint (1/20); surrogate marker; no longevity data.
- Independent
- Devices & therapiesSauna Mixed
- Independent
Laukkanen 2015 (KIHD, men), anchor
Finnish Medical Foundation, Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research, Finnish Cultural Foundation; no conflicts reported. No sauna-industry money.
Limits: Men only; single baseline self-report; residual confounding possible.
- Independent
Laukkanen 2018 (KIHD, +women)
Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research; no competing interests.
Limits: Same cohort family, not independent; 181 CVD events; single baseline measure.
- Independent
Gravel 2023, mechanistic RCT (null)
Academic physiology lab (Canada); no sauna-industry sponsorship identified.
Limits: Small, 8 weeks, surrogate endpoints; CAD patients; no hard outcome.
- Independent
Laukkanen 2017, dementia/Alzheimer's
Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research; no conflicts.
Limits: Same KIHD men; reverse causation (prodromal disease) possible; coded outcomes.
- Independent
Kunutsor 2022, inflammation × sauna
Finnish Foundation for Cardiovascular Research; no conflicts.
Limits: Authors cite residual confounding, reverse causation, regression dilution.
- Independent
- DietSeed oils Unsupported
- Mixed funding
Mozaffarian 2010, PLoS Medicine
NIH/NHLBI and a Searle Scholar Award led the funding with no funder role; lead author disclosed broad food/pharma honoraria incl. Unilever.
Limits: CHD endpoints only; older trials with varied PUFA sources.
- Independent
Hooper/Cochrane 2020, CD011737
Official NIHR/Cochrane review; no industry sponsorship of the review (funding not stated on the cited plain-language page).
Limits: Benefit is for cardiovascular events; little or no effect on all-cause or CVD mortality.
- Funding unknown
Johnson & Fritsche 2012, J Acad Nutr Diet
Funding/COI not stated on the NCBI/DARE abstract reviewed; second author is an academic lipid-immunology researcher.
Limits: Healthy adults, modest duration; measures blood markers, not disease endpoints.
- Independent
Rett & Whelan 2011, Nutr Metab (Lond)
Authors declared no competing interests; public/academic funding (USDA NC1039, Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station).
Limits: Western-diet adults; surrogate biomarker (arachidonic acid), not clinical outcomes.
- Mixed funding
Marklund 2019, Circulation
FLAG: two co-authors reported Unilever research support for this work; senior author disclosed multiple funders. Result favourable to PUFA.
Limits: Observational biomarker associations, not randomized; residual confounding possible.
- Independent
Grootveld 2018, editorial (PMC6131264)
Only a university PhD fee-waiver scholarship; authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Limits: Concerns reheated/reused oil; human outcome evidence limited, largely animal/mechanistic.
- Mixed funding
- Industry-funded
SELECT (Lincoff 2023)
Funded and run by Novo Nordisk; sponsor-favourable result, published in NEJM.
Limits: High-risk population only; does not test aging or lifespan.
- Industry-funded
STEP 1 (Wilding 2021)
Funded by Novo Nordisk.
Limits: Endpoint is weight, not aging; GI and gallbladder adverse events noted.
- Industry-funded
FLOW (Perkovic 2024)
Funded by Novo Nordisk; stopped early for efficacy.
Limits: Diabetic CKD only; not an aging endpoint.
- Industry-funded
STEP 1 DXA substudy (2021)
Substudy of Novo Nordisk-funded STEP 1.
Limits: Small; lean mass fell 9.7% (~40% of mass lost), though lean rose as a proportion of total body mass.
- Industry-funded
STEP 1 withdrawal extension (Wilding 2022)
Novo Nordisk-funded STEP 1 extension.
Limits: ~two-thirds of lost weight (11.6 pts) regained within a year; cardiometabolic gains reverted toward baseline.
- Industry-funded
- FrontierSenolytics Unproven
- Independent
Baker / van Deursen, Nature 2016 (genetic ablation)
NIH/foundation funded (Mayo Clinic); Mayo holds senolytic patents and senior authors have related interests.
Limits: Mouse model; genetic, not a drug; does not predict human anti-aging benefit.
- Independent
Xu / Kirkland, Nature Medicine 2018 (D+Q in old mice)
NIH funded; stated COI: patents on senolytic drugs (PCT/US2016/041646) held by Mayo Clinic; Kirkland, Tchkonia, Xu disclose interests.
Limits: Mouse lifespan endpoint; translation to humans unproven.
- Independent
Hickson, EBioMedicine 2019 (diabetic kidney disease)
NIH/foundation funded; Mayo-affiliated authors with disclosed senolytic patent interests.
Limits: No placebo, n=9, 3-day dosing; measures tissue senescence markers, not aging or lifespan.
- Independent
Justice, EBioMedicine 2019 (pulmonary fibrosis)
NIH (NIA/NCATS) funded; Mayo-affiliated authors with disclosed patent interests.
Limits: Uncontrolled, underpowered; disease-specific function signals, not an aging endpoint.
- Industry-funded
Unity UBX0101 Phase 2, 2020 (knee osteoarthritis)
Sponsored by Unity Biotechnology; negative result reported against commercial interest, which strengthens its credibility.
Limits: Disease (pain) endpoint, single intra-articular dose; failed primary endpoint, program discontinued.
- Independent
- SupplementsSpermidine Mixed
- Independent
Eisenberg 2009, Nature Cell Biology (mechanism)
2009 basic-science paper predating the Longevity Labs venture.
Limits: No human in vivo data; establishes mechanism, not clinical benefit.
- Mixed funding
Eisenberg 2016, Nature Medicine (mouse + Bruneck)
Madeo/Eisenberg later founded or advised TLL; human arm is diet, not supplementation.
Limits: Human arm observational only; supplement benefit not tested in people.
- Mixed funding
SmartAge RCT, Schwarz 2022, JAMA Network Open
Public funders (BMBF, DFG, BIH) but TLL funded extract development; Madeo/Sigrist/Eisenberg held equity/advisory roles, Stekovic was TLL CEO, Madeo holds a pending patent.
Limits: Null on primary endpoint despite favorable conflicts; low dose (0.9 mg/d) cannot fully exclude effect at other doses.
- Mixed funding
Wirth 2018, Cortex (pilot)
Madeo among authors; extract supplied for the trial.
Limits: Tiny n, short duration; authors called for a confirmatory trial that (SmartAge) then failed to confirm.
- Mixed funding
Kiechl 2018, AJCN (Bruneck mortality)
Overlapping author group (Eisenberg) with the TLL ecosystem.
Limits: Diet, not supplementation; association not causation; healthy-user/healthy-diet confounding.
- Funding unknown
Mini-review of cognitive RCTs, PPCR 2023
Funding/COI not stated; used to characterize the evidence base, not as an efficacy source.
Limits: Few small heterogeneous trials, low doses; 2 positive at 3 months, 1 null at 12 months.
- Independent
- DrugsStatins Misleading
- Industry-funded
JUPITER RCT (rosuvastatin, primary prevention)
Funded by AstraZeneca, maker of rosuvastatin; lead author named on the hs-CRP patent used to select patients. Flagged because favourable to sponsor; verdict does not rest on it.
Limits: Funding/COI widely documented but not confirmable from the loaded abstract; trial stopped early, which can exaggerate effect.
- Independent
SAMSON n-of-1 nocebo trial
British Heart Foundation; no manufacturer involvement.
Limits: Small sample; exact symptom-score figures sit in a paywalled NEJM correspondence and are not independently verified.
- Independent
Sattar diabetes meta-analysis
Stated funding: None; investigator-initiated.
Limits: Quantifies one harm only; reports a real but small risk, bounded and outweighed by vascular benefit in at-risk groups.
- Not applicable
BMJ correction of the '18-20%' side-effect figure
Retraction Watch summary of a BMJ editorial correction.
Limits: Documents withdrawal of the 18-20% figure as a misread observational study; does NOT itself state any corrected '~9%' replacement rate.
- Industry-funded
- Devices & therapiesStem cell therapy Unsupported
- Independent
Kuriyan et al., NEJM 2017 (blindness after eye injections)
NIH/National Eye Institute grant P30 EY014801; no industry funding. Academic ophthalmologists reporting harm.
Limits: Case series; documents that severe harm can occur but cannot quantify population incidence.
- Independent
El Assaad et al., scoping review of stem cells for anti-aging, World J Exp Med 2024
Academic review; authors declare no conflict of interest and no external funding.
Limits: Scoping (not systematic) review; confirms absence of rigorous human evidence rather than testing efficacy.
- Independent
Liu et al., MSCs/EVs as longevity tools, Biogerontology 2025
US-Israel Binational Science Foundation and Israeli government/academy grants; authors declare no competing interests. Non-industry.
Limits: Effects limited to rodents; human extrapolation called 'mostly speculative.' Reviews preclinical work, not human outcomes.
- Independent
ISSCR Guide to Stem Cell Treatments (patient handbook)
Non-profit scientific society; patient-education guidance, not industry-funded.
Limits: Guidance, not primary data; reflects expert consensus against marketed clinic offerings.
- Independent
- DietSugar Mixed
- Independent
Te Morenga, Mallard & Mann (BMJ 2013)
Academic/public-health authors (Mann advised WHO); no industry funding. The neutral cross-check.
Limits: Cohort component is observational; many RCTs short.
- Independent
WHO sugars guideline (2015)
World Health Organization; no commercial funding.
Limits: Guideline, not new trial data; no toxin framing used.
- Independent
Malik & Hu (Nutrients 2019)
No external funding, but senior author does pro bono anti-SSB litigation support (CSPI); flagged.
Limits: Largely observational; residual confounding possible.
- Industry-funded
Khan & Sievenpiper (Eur J Nutr 2016)
Authors disclose Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper Snapple, Canadian Sugar Institute and other food-industry ties; conflict flagged.
Limits: Industry-funded; feeding trials short and small.
- Not applicable
Lustig, "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" (2009)
Advocacy source cited to represent the claim, not as evidence.
Limits: Not a study; rhetorical framing under review.
- Independent
- SupplementsSulforaphane Unproven
- Independent
Egner/Kensler Qidong broccoli-sprout detox RCT
Academic/government (Johns Hopkins, NIH/NCI); no supplement-seller sponsorship.
Limits: Endpoint is a urinary detox biomarker, not cancer or any clinical outcome.
- Independent
Zimmerman autism replication
U.S. Department of Defense; independent of industry.
Limits: Null on primary autism outcome; only one secondary scale improved.
- Independent
Alumkal recurrent-prostate phase II
Academic/NIH (OHSU); funding consistent with affiliation, not re-verified from disclosure.
Limits: Primary PSA endpoint failed (1/20); only a secondary doubling-time signal.
- Mixed funding
Axelsson type-2-diabetes RCT
Lund University; two authors are inventors on sulforaphane patent applications.
Limits: Glucose/HbA1c benefit restricted to an obese, dysregulated subgroup.
- Not applicable
Wikipedia clinical-evidence summary
Non-commercial reference summarizing secondary sources.
Limits: States no good clinical evidence of benefit despite extensive animal data.
- Independent
- EnvironmentalSunscreen Misleading
- Independent
Matta et al., JAMA 2019, FDA maximal-use absorption RCT
Conducted and funded by the U.S. FDA; no commercial sponsor, no conflicts reported.
Limits: Plasma-level study only; measures absorption, never designed to detect clinical harm.
- Independent
Matta et al., JAMA 2020, FDA maximal-use absorption RCT
FDA-funded and authored; conflicts 'none reported.'
Limits: Single-application PK design; shows absorption, not toxicity.
- Independent
Green et al., JCO 2011, Nambour melanoma follow-up
Academic/government-supported Australian trial; not industry-funded.
Limits: Total-melanoma CI marginal (upper 1.02); high-UV Australian setting may limit generalizability.
- Independent
Green et al., Lancet 1999, Nambour base RCT (squamous-cell)
Academic/government-supported; not industry-funded.
Limits: 4.5-year endpoints; verified via PubMed as cited journal URL was inaccessible.
- Independent
Harvard Health, the science of sunscreen (citing JAAD analysis)
Academic medical publisher; no industry sponsorship indicated.
Limits: Secondary source; relays the 277-year exposure-margin estimate from underlying JAAD work.
- Independent
- SupplementsTaurine Unproven
- Independent
Singh et al., Science 2023 (foundational, multi-species)
NIH (NIA/NHLBI/NICHD) and Wellcome Trust; Columbia filed a provisional patent (inventor V.K. Yadav), a minor flag.
Limits: Lifespan effect is animal-only; human data associational, no outcome trial.
- Independent
Fernandez et al., Science 2025 (de Cabo, NIH): is taurine an aging biomarker?
NIH National Institute on Aging intramural; no commercial conflicts.
Limits: Biomarker analysis, not an intervention; sex-specific patterns.
- Independent
Marcangeli et al., Aging Cell 2025: evidence against taurine deficiency in humans
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, NSERC, FRQS; no conflicts.
Limits: Men only; cross-sectional, not interventional.
- Independent
Tzang et al., Nutrition & Diabetes 2024: taurine and metabolic syndrome
National Taiwan University Hospital and Taiwan science ministry; no conflicts.
Limits: Short-term surrogate markers (BP, glucose, triglycerides), not lifespan/healthspan; small heterogeneous trials.
- Independent
- PeptidesTB-500 Unproven
- Industry-funded
SEER-1: RGN-259 (Tb4) eye drops, neurotrophic keratopathy
Funded by ReGenTree, LLC; authors Kleinman and Kang employed by ReGenTree, Sung by parent HLB Therapeutics.
Limits: Tiny n. Primary endpoint (complete healing at Day 29, 60% vs 12.5%) was NOT significant (p=0.0656). Eye drop, not injectable, not a recovery use.
- Independent
BSCG regulatory and safety review of TB-500
Independent third-party testing body founded by Olympic drug-testing expert Don Catlin; no stake in selling TB-500.
Limits: Narrative review, not primary data. Synthesises regulatory status, contamination risk and the thin trial record.
- Funding unknown
Xing et al., review of thymosin beta-4 function
Academic review; funding not stated on the fetched content.
Limits: Confirms human evidence is limited to Phase 1/2; no Phase 3 for tissue repair. Oncologic signal is mechanistic, not proof of harm in users.
- Industry-funded
Topical Tb4 Phase 2 venous-stasis ulcer trial
Sponsor (RegeneRx)-developed compound. Cited via BSCG summary, not the primary publication.
Limits: Topical pharmaceutical Tb4 for ulcers, not injectable TB-500 for recovery. Overall healing not conclusively superior to control.
- Funding unknown
Ho et al., LC-MS detection of TB-500 in horses
Hong Kong Jockey Club racing-laboratory authors; anti-doping detection context, not a product sponsor.
Limits: Establishes identity and equine doping use, not human efficacy or safety. Source does not state the number of horses dosed.
- Industry-funded
- DiagnosticsTelomere tests Misleading
- Independent
Martin-Ruiz 2014, Int J Epidemiol: 10-lab blinded reproducibility
UK MRC, Swedish Cancer Society, British Heart Foundation; 'Conflict of interest: None declared.'
Limits: Tests lab reproducibility, not clinical outcomes; reports CVs across methods, not personal accuracy.
- Independent
Kim 2011, PLoS ONE: monochrome-multiplex qPCR test-retest
NIH/NIEHS Intramural Program; no competing interests.
Limits: Small, single lab; actually found acceptable short-term reliability under controlled conditions.
- Not applicable
Armanios interview, Science News 2018
Journalist quoting an independent academic researcher.
Limits: Commentary, not primary data; Swedish/22-year figures belong to source 4, not this interview.
- Not applicable
Lewis 2018, PLOS DNA Science blog
PLOS science blog corroborating primary reliability data.
Limits: Secondary commentary; anchors to peer-reviewed studies above.
- Industry-funded
Salvador 2016, Rejuvenation Research: TA-65 RCT
Funded by T.A. Sciences (maker of TA-65); 2 author-employees + 3 author-consultants.
Limits: Shows a +530 bp length gain, not that consumer tests measure biological age; conflicted authorship.
- Independent
- DrugsTirzepatide Unproven
- Industry-funded
SURMOUNT-1 (obesity)
Funded by Eli Lilly; several authors are Lilly employees/consultants.
Limits: Endpoint is weight, not lifespan; topline ITT ~20.9% at 15 mg (per-protocol estimand slightly higher).
- Industry-funded
SURPASS-2 (type 2 diabetes)
Funded by Eli Lilly; comparator was semaglutide (Novo).
Limits: Surrogate metabolic endpoints (HbA1c, weight), not lifespan.
- Industry-funded
SURPASS-CVOT (CV outcomes)
Eli Lilly makes both tirzepatide and comparator dulaglutide.
Limits: Noninferior not superior for MACE; mortality benefit largely noncardiovascular; high-risk diabetics only.
- Industry-funded
SUMMIT (HFpEF + obesity)
Explicitly funded by Eli Lilly.
Limits: Disease-specific HF outcome, not a general aging/lifespan endpoint.
- Industry-funded
SURMOUNT-1 body composition
Eli Lilly-funded; authors include Lilly affiliates.
Limits: ~75% fat / 25% lean loss; absolute lean mass fell, basis for the muscle-loss concern.
- Industry-funded
- SupplementsTongkat Ali and Fadogia Unproven
- Industry-funded
Chinnappan/Physta 12-wk RCT, hypogonadal men
Funded by Biotropics Malaysia, maker of Physta; two authors were company employees.
Limits: Total T rose vs placebo but free T did not; maker-funded; only low-T older men.
- Industry-funded
Talbott tongkat ali stress RCT
Funded by Biotropics Malaysia; authors tied to tongkat-ali and nutrition firms.
Limits: Short, mixed-sex, maker-funded; stressed adults only.
- Independent
Yakubu Fadogia aphrodisiac (rats)
Academic (University of Ilorin); no industry sponsor.
Limits: Rodent-only, short; no human evidence; rat count unspecified.
- Independent
Yakubu Fadogia testicular toxicity (rats)
Academic (University of Ilorin); no industry sponsor.
Limits: Single group, small; establishes a signal, not a human risk figure.
- Not applicable
Read Andrew Huberman (claimant summary)
Secondary Substack summary with affiliate links; documents claim, not efficacy.
Limits: Some attributed figures are not actually on this page; not evidence.
- Industry-funded
- HormonesTRT Misleading
- Independent
Testosterone Trials (Snyder), NEJM 2016
NIH (National Institute on Aging, NIDDK); AbbVie donated drug and placebo. The independently funded efficacy trial, and the one that returned the null vitality result.
Limits: Enrolled only men with low T plus symptoms (cannot speak to normal-T "anti-aging" use); 1-year duration; benefit largely confined to sexual function.
- Industry-funded
TRAVERSE (Lincoff), NEJM 2023
Funded by a consortium of testosterone manufacturers led by AbbVie (with Endo, Allergan, Upsher-Smith, Acerus/Aytu). The reassuring safety result carries this conflict-of-interest flag.
Limits: Diagnosed hypogonadism only; powered for MACE non-inferiority, not for the AF/VTE/AKI signals it nonetheless showed; monitored transdermal gel, so may not generalise to unmonitored or high-dose injectable use.
- Independent
Endocrine Society guideline (Bhasin), JCEM 2018
Endocrine Society professional guideline.
Limits: Recommends TRT only for documented hypogonadism; recommends against routine prescribing to all men 65+ with low T; does not address, let alone endorse, anti-aging use in normal-T men.
- Industry-funded
TRAVERSE prostate substudy (Bhasin), JAMA Netw Open 2023
Same AbbVie-led manufacturer consortium as TRAVERSE, favourable result, COI flag.
Limits: Monitored hypogonadal men only; the high-grade prostate-cancer point estimate was numerically above 1 (HR 1.62) though non-significant on a wide interval; ~22-month follow-up cannot address long-latency cancer risk.
- Independent
TOM trial (Basaria), NEJM 2010
NIH-funded. The independent trial that produced the cautionary signal behind the FDA's 2015 warnings.
Limits: Stopped early for excess cardiovascular events; small; enrolled frail older men with mobility limits and high rates of pre-existing cardiac disease, so the signal may not generalise to healthier men.
- Independent
Prostate-safety network meta-analysis, Front Endocrinol 2022
Academic (Chinese government/NSFC grants).
Limits: Pools cohort studies alongside RCTs; reassuring on prostate cancer (RR 0.62) but in monitored low-T/hypogonadal men, not normal-T anti-aging users.
- Independent
- SupplementsUrolithin A Mixed
- Industry-funded
Andreux 2019, Nature Metabolism (first-in-human)
Funded by Amazentis SA; authors include Amazentis founders/employees (Rinsch, Auwerx, Aebischer, Singh).
Limits: Primary endpoint was safety; no strength or function tested; 4 weeks; small.
- Industry-funded
Liu 2022, ENERGIZE, JAMA Network Open
"This research was supported by Amazentis SA." D'Amico, Singh employees; Rinsch founder/CEO/board; Aebischer chair/shareholder.
Limits: Both co-primary endpoints (6-min walk, max ATP) missed; endurance secondary, attenuated by 4 months; ~76% female, 100% White.
- Industry-funded
Singh 2022, ATLAS, Cell Reports Medicine
"This study was funded by Amazentis SA." Multiple authors employees/board; Auwerx and Aebischer on Scientific Advisory Board of the sponsor.
Limits: Primary peak-power endpoint missed; 12% gain is secondary torque; grip/quadriceps NS; 6MWT/VO2/gait within-group, NS vs placebo.
- Independent
ADDF / Cognitive Vitality evidence review (Oct 2024)
ADDF/Cognitive Vitality is a non-industry reviewer.
Limits: Narrative review; confirms animal-only lifespan data and both missed primary endpoints; "good safety but limited benefits in short term studies so far."
- Industry-funded
- SupplementsVitamin D Misleading
- Mixed funding
VITAL (Manson 2019, NEJM)
U.S. NIH (NCI/NHLBI; grants U01/R01 CA138962). Capsules donated by Pharmavite (vitamin D) and Pronova BioPharma (omega-3); trial investigator-designed and -analysed.
Limits: Participants not selected for deficiency; a post-hoc normal-BMI cancer signal (HR 0.76) is hypothesis-generating, not a primary result.
- Independent
D-Health (Neale 2022, Lancet Diab Endocrinol)
Australian NHMRC; no commercial sponsor of design or analysis.
Limits: All-cause mortality null (HR 1.04); cancer mortality numerically higher (HR 1.15, 0.96–1.39), reaching HR 1.24 (1.01–1.54) excluding the first 2 years, a possible adverse signal, not benefit. Monthly bolus dosing.
- Mixed funding
VITAL fracture ancillary (LeBoff 2022, NEJM)
U.S. NIAMS (R01 AR060574, AR070854, AR059775) plus parent VITAL NIH funders.
Limits: Adults not recruited for deficiency, low bone mass, or osteoporosis; total HR 0.98, nonvertebral 0.97, hip 1.01.
- Independent
Zhang 2019 (BMJ meta-analysis)
National Natural Science Foundation of China; National Key R&D Program of China. No supplement-industry funding.
Limits: All-cause mortality null (RR 0.98, 0.95–1.02); a significant cancer-mortality reduction (RR 0.84, 0.74–0.95) is a contested secondary signal not reproduced, and arguably reversed, in D-Health.
- Not applicable
Cummings & Rosen 2022 (NEJM editorial)
Independent academic clinicians (UCSF; Maine Medical Center / Tufts).
Limits: Opinion synthesis, not new data; PubMed page carries no abstract.
- Independent
Jolliffe 2021 (Lancet Diab Endocrinol)
Paper's funding statement reads 'None.'
Limits: Protection against acute respiratory infection modest (OR 0.92, 0.86–0.99) and concentrated in daily low-dose regimens (400–1000 IU); no significant effect by baseline 25(OH)D subgroup. A narrow benefit, not validation of the longevity claim.
- Mixed funding
- SupplementsVitamin K2 Mixed
- Industry-funded
Knapen 2015, MK-7 arterial stiffness RCT
VitaK/Maastricht, tied to NattoPharma; used branded MenaQ7.
Limits: Surrogate (arterial stiffness), not clinical events; manufacturer link.
- Mixed funding
AVADEC (Diederichsen 2022), aortic valve calcification
Independent Danish academic design; ingredient from Kappa Bioscience (K2Vital), not MenaQ7.
Limits: Null primary outcome; men only; coronary-calcium hint was exploratory.
- Funding unknown
Rotterdam Study (Geleijnse 2004), dietary K2 and CHD
Academic Dutch cohort; original funding not confirmed from opened source.
Limits: Dietary intake, confounding-prone, not causal; not replicated cleanly.
- Independent
Ma 2022, K2 and postmenopausal osteoporosis
Chinese academic grants; independent of K2 supplement industry.
Limits: K2-alone not significant for BMD; fracture signal driven by Japanese MK-4.
- Industry-funded
- Independent
Cochrane review, muscle soreness/recovery
Cochrane; no commercial sponsor.
Limits: Very-low certainty; mostly young men; no adverse-event surveillance.
- Funding unknown
He et al., inflammation meta-analysis
Authors declare no competing interests; funding not stated.
Limits: Small, heterogeneous, short-term; surrogate markers; abstract conclusion more bullish than data warrant.
- Independent
Stanek et al., ankylosing spondylitis RCT
Medical University of Silesia grants; no conflicts declared.
Limits: Tiny sample; 10-day window; no long-term follow-up; IL-6 unchanged.
- Independent
J Evid Based Med indexed abstract of Cochrane
Academic, Cochrane-affiliated.
Limits: Not an independent study; restates the 4-RCT review.
- Independent
- ProtocolsWim Hof Method Mixed
- Funding unknown
Kox et al. 2014, PNAS
Radboud University; authors declared no conflict, but Wim Hof personally trained the participants.
Limits: Tiny sample, healthy young men only, acute injected challenge, not a real disease; no longevity data.
- Funding unknown
Zwaag et al. 2022, Psychosom Med
Same Radboud group as Kox 2014.
Limits: Mechanistic only; shows the effect is an adrenaline/alkalosis stress response, not disease treatment.
- Independent
Almahayni & Hammond 2024, PLOS One
No specific funding; explicitly raised conflict-of-interest concerns about Hof's involvement.
Limits: Very low quality evidence; 7/8 RCTs high bias concern; not generalizable; no disease or longevity outcomes.
- Not applicable
Wikipedia: deaths and scientific reception
Aggregates Het Parool reporting, coroner findings, and the Metzger lawsuit.
Limits: Journalistic and legal sources, not systematic surveillance; exact death count uncertain.
- Not applicable
Live Science: expert safety commentary
Science journalism quoting domain experts.
Limits: Commentary, not a trial; used for the drowning and arrhythmia safety mechanism.
- Funding unknown
- FrontierYoung blood and plasma exchange Unsupported
- Independent
Conboy et al., Nature 2005 (heterochronic parabiosis)
Academic labs; foundational basic science, no commercial product sponsor.
Limits: Surgical mouse model; cannot be ethically or practically reproduced in humans, and is not an infusible product.
- Independent
Mehdipour et al., Aging 2020 (saline-albumin 'dilution' exchange)
NIH grants plus Open Philanthropy; authors declare no financial conflicts.
Limits: Very small mouse sample; human evidence is only a preliminary cell-culture signal, not clinical outcomes.
- Not applicable
FDA safety statement, Feb 19 2019 (Gottlieb and Marks)
US federal regulator.
Limits: A warning, not a trial; establishes absence of proven benefit and known risks rather than testing efficacy.
- Industry-funded
AMBAR primary results, Boada et al. 2020 (plasma exchange in Alzheimer's)
Sponsored by Grifols, maker of the albumin and IVIG tested; multiple authors are Grifols employees. Sponsor-favorable pattern.
Limits: Did not meet both co-primary endpoints; in diagnosed Alzheimer's, not healthy aging, so cannot establish rejuvenation.
- Industry-funded
AMBAR design paper, Boada et al. 2019
States verbatim the trial 'is sponsored by Grifols, a manufacturer of therapeutic human serum albumin and intravenous immune globulin.'
Limits: Protocol paper only; reports design, not efficacy.
- Independent
- SupplementsNMN Unproven
- Industry-funded
Frontiers in Nutrition, 2022
Mitsubishi Corp Life Sciences, funded; supplied the NMN; 4 author-employees.
Limits: Small; surrogate endpoint (NAD+); single trial; healthy Japanese adults only.
- Industry-funded
npj Aging, 2022
Mitsubishi, funded; supplied NMN; 3 author-employees.
Limits: Very small (22 dropped after a dosing error); gains only in gait speed + left grip; “nominally significant.”
- Industry-funded
Scientific Reports, 2022
Mitsubishi, funded; manufactured NMN; 5 author-employees.
Limits: Very short; high dose (1,250 mg); short-term safety only, not efficacy.
- Independent
Cureus, 2024
Declares no funding and no conflicts.
Limits: Improvement was non-significant; Cureus is lightly peer-reviewed.
- Mixed funding
J. Int. Soc. Sports Nutrition, 2021
China government-funded, but NMN supplied by manufacturer GeneHarbor.
Limits: Exercise co-intervention (confounder); VO₂max unchanged; multiple dose arms.
- Independent
Crit. Reviews in Food Science & Nutrition, 2024
Declares no funding and no conflicts.
Limits: No significant glucose/lipid benefit; authors warn benefits “may be exaggerated.”
- Not applicable
bioRxiv, 2024
Not assessed (animal preprint).
Limits: Preprint, not peer-reviewed; lifespan effect female-only; animal→human gap.
- Industry-funded
Each study here is appraised inside one of our checks, click any check to read the full evidence and sources. Funding reflects what we could verify; figures cover checks currently in review. Caveat is journalism, not medical advice, and takes no industry money. How we grade.