Longevity supplement NOVOS Core improved vascular aging markers in first human trial

Most supplement companies never run a human trial. They launch on mechanistic plausibility and preclinical animal data, sell for years, and let customer anecdotes do the work. The ones that do run trials rarely see effects that separate cleanly from placebo.

A six-month randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted at the University of Surrey and published as a preprint in February 2026 broke that pattern. It tested NOVOS Core Clinical, a 12-ingredient longevity formulation, in 61 healthy adults aged 40 and older with no diagnosed cardiovascular disease. Three independent markers of vascular aging improved: endothelial function, arterial stiffness, and systolic blood pressure. All three moved in the right direction. None were subtle.

The study is not yet peer-reviewed. That matters. But the structure of the data and the independence of the endpoints make this one of the more serious trial readouts to land in the longevity supplement space, a category that includes NAD precursors like NMN and NR and a growing list of compounds chasing the same biology.

What NOVOS Core contains

NOVOS Core Clinical is a multi-component formulation built around the 12 hallmarks of aging, the framework proposed by Lopez-Otin and colleagues in a 2013 Cell paper and updated in 2023. The supplement contains 12 bioactive compounds: calcium alpha-ketoglutarate, fisetin, ginger root extract, glucosamine sulfate, glycine, hyaluronic acid, L-theanine, magnesium malate, lithium aspartate, pterostilbene, rhodiola rosea root extract, and vitamin C.

Several of these have independent trial evidence. Ca-AKG attracted attention after a 2014 mouse study in Nature showed alpha-ketoglutarate extended lifespan. Fisetin has senolytic data from the Mayo Clinic. Magnesium and L-theanine have human data on sleep and stress. The formulation is designed as a stack, not a menu, and the trial evaluated the whole product, not individual ingredients.

NOVOS, the company behind it, is a public benefit corporation founded in 2019 by Chris Mirabile. It funded the Surrey trial through an unrestricted research grant and supplied the study product. The academic authors retained full control over data and publication decisions.

What the trial measured

The trial, registered as NCT06145087, randomized 61 participants to either NOVOS Core Clinical or placebo for six months. Researchers measured three vascular endpoints that track independently in aging populations: flow-mediated dilation, pulse wave velocity, and systolic blood pressure.

Flow-mediated dilation (FMD) measures how well the endothelium, the inner lining of blood vessels, responds to increased blood flow by dilating. FMD declines with age, and even a 1 percent improvement is generally considered physiologically meaningful. The NOVOS group showed a 2.9 percentage point improvement versus placebo. That held both acutely at two hours after the first dose and in the fasted state at six months, so it was not a transient post-dose bump.

How does 2.9 percent compare? The company pulled comparator data from published meta-analyses. Aerobic exercise programs land around 1.2 percent. Resistance training, around 2.1 percent. Cocoa flavanols, one of the most studied vascular interventions in the supplement world, manage about 1.2 percent. The NOVOS effect sits at the high end of what structured lifestyle interventions can produce.

Pulse wave velocity (PWV) measures how fast the pressure wave from each heartbeat travels along the arterial tree. Stiffer arteries transmit the wave faster. PWV typically rises by roughly 1.0 m/s per decade of adult life. The NOVOS group improved by 1.18 m/s versus placebo at six months. That is roughly equivalent to reversing a decade of arterial stiffening, at least over the measurement period.

Again, the comparators are instructive. HIIT training produces PWV improvements of about 0.62 m/s in published meta-analyses. Aerobic exercise lands at 0.41 to 0.58 m/s. A DASH dietary pattern, which is a whole-diet intervention, achieves roughly 1.07 m/s. The 1.18 m/s effect surpasses all of them. Cross-trial comparisons come with obvious caveats (different populations, durations, measurement protocols), but the direction and magnitude are consistent.

Systolic blood pressure fell by 6.1 mmHg in the supplement group relative to placebo. The participants started with normal-range blood pressure, so there was not much room to drop. Most interventions in normotensive populations produce smaller shifts: aerobic exercise typically reduces systolic pressure by about 4.0 mmHg, a DASH diet by about 3.9 mmHg. A 6.1 mmHg drop is in the range associated with reduced cardiovascular event risk in larger population studies, though this trial was not powered to measure clinical outcomes.

Lipid levels did not change. The authors read that as evidence that vascular aging is a distinct, modifiable pathway, separate from cholesterol metabolism.

Dr. Christopher Yi, a vascular surgeon at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center who was not involved in the trial, told Medical News Today that the consistency of effects across endpoints is not common in supplement trials. He also pointed out that the age-40 window is exactly when vascular decline accelerates but before irreversible cardiovascular disease becomes clinically obvious.

What the study does not tell us

The trial has real limits. Sixty-one participants is modest. The study was single-center. It was not powered for clinical events. Nobody tracked heart attacks, strokes, or mortality. And the formulation is multi-component, which means, as Dr. Yi noted, it is impossible to know which ingredients drove the effect. Any one of the 12 compounds, or a subset of them, or the combination itself could be responsible.

The most important caveat is that the results are not yet peer-reviewed. The manuscript is available as a preprint on SSRN. Other researchers have not formally scrutinized the methods or statistics. Preprint results sometimes shift after peer review. Sometimes they do not survive it at all.

Durability is another open question. Six months is a reasonable window for a vascular intervention trial, but it says nothing about what happens at one year, three years, or a decade. The participants were healthy at baseline with normal-range blood pressure. Whether the same effects appear in people with established hypertension or cardiovascular disease is unknown.

Only one organ system has been tested in humans. NOVOS says trials in other domains are planned. The company’s preclinical data showed an 18 percent lifespan extension in aged mice, which is consistent with a multi-system effect, but mouse lifespan data has misled the supplement industry many times before.

Monique Richard, a registered dietitian nutritionist, told Medical News Today that a food-first approach remains the foundation. Many of these compounds are derived from plant foods: berries, leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, herbs, teas, legumes, nuts, and seeds. If someone chooses to use a supplement, it should complement, not replace, these foundational strategies, she said.

The bottom line

This pilot study produced consistent effects across three independent vascular endpoints. The effect sizes (a 2.9 percent improvement in FMD, 1.18 m/s reduction in PWV, and 6.1 mmHg drop in systolic blood pressure) put it in the company of structured exercise and dietary interventions. That is unusual for a nutritional supplement trial.

But it is one trial. It enrolled 61 people at one site. It is not peer-reviewed. The product costs roughly $79 per month. And the multi-component design means nobody can say which ingredient or ingredients did the work.

For adults over 40 interested in vascular aging, the data is hypothesis-generating rather than practice-changing. The longevity supplement field is producing steadily better human evidence. NOVOS Core is part of that trend. Whether it is an inflection point depends on what replication studies, longer follow-up, and peer review turn up next.