Elysium's 7-day supplement pilot ties Basis to menopause symptom drops
A 40-woman open-label study with no control arm reported 50%-plus self-reported symptom reductions and a shifted estrogen ratio, results the sponsor now wants a randomized trial to confirm.
Executive Summary
- Elysium Health disclosed pilot-study results linking its Basis supplement to self-reported reductions in menopause symptoms and a shift in an estrogen ratio, alongside the discovery of a new NAD+ byproduct.
- The study ran open-label with no placebo comparator over a single week, so it can generate a hypothesis about a biological effect but cannot establish one.
- The company has said it plans a larger randomized, placebo-controlled trial, an implicit acknowledgment that this pilot cannot stand as confirmatory evidence on its own.
- Basis enters a menopause-symptom field with few late-stage, controlled trials of any single intervention, leaving the mechanism largely untested rather than validated or refuted by prior work.
The disclosure
Elysium Health said research published in Frontiers in Aging found that women taking Basis, the company's NAD+-boosting supplement, self-reported significant improvements in menopause symptoms after seven days. The company also reported a shift in the ratio of estradiol (E2) to estrone (E1), two forms of estrogen that rebalance during the menopause transition, and said researchers characterized a previously unreported NAD+ metabolite. Elysium paired the announcement with the addition of Columbia reproductive-aging researcher Yousin Suh to its scientific advisory board. ElysiumElysium Health™ Research Demonstrates Improvements in Menopause Symptoms and Estrogen Balance with Basis™ and Reveals New Insights into NAD+ MetabolismJul 9, 2026
How it was done
The study was an open-label pilot with no placebo or active comparator, enrolling 40 women over age 35: 32 who self-reported menopause symptoms and eight who did not. Participants took Basis for seven days, and the symptomatic group self-reported reductions of 50% or more in the frequency and severity of hot flashes, bloating, and poor sleep. Marie Migaud, the study co-author and an Elysium research collaborator, said the work began from her own experience with the supplement and that the estradiol-to-estrone shift was unexpected. The underlying trial, NCT04841499, registered with the University of South Alabama as sponsor, completed in 2021 with all 40 planned participants enrolled. Elysium+1Elysium Health™ Research Demonstrates Improvements in Menopause Symptoms and Estrogen Balance with Basis™ and Reveals New Insights into NAD+ MetabolismJul 9, 2026Effects of a Seven-day BASIS™ Supplementation on Menopausal Syndromes and Measurements of the Urinary Vitamin B3 and Estradiol Levels in Pre-, Peri- and Post-menopauseNCT04841499
What the result establishes
A seven-day, unblinded, self-report pilot in 40 people is built to generate a hypothesis, not to confirm a treatment effect. There was no comparator arm to separate a Basis-driven change from placebo response, symptom variability, or the act of tracking symptoms itself. The trial's own registered primary outcome was described only as change in undesirable effects of menopause, with no disclosed effect size, confidence interval, or statistical test attached to the symptom or estrogen-ratio findings. Elysium's own next step, a larger randomized, placebo-controlled trial, is the type of design needed to test whether the signal holds outside an open-label setting. NCT04841499+1Effects of a Seven-day BASIS™ Supplementation on Menopausal Syndromes and Measurements of the Urinary Vitamin B3 and Estradiol Levels in Pre-, Peri- and Post-menopauseNCT04841499Elysium Health™ Research Demonstrates Improvements in Menopause Symptoms and Estrogen Balance with Basis™ and Reveals New Insights into NAD+ MetabolismJul 9, 2026
The field context
Menopause-symptom trials in the broader competitive set are sparse and mechanistically scattered: among trials searched in the indication, sponsors are testing dietary fiber, a gut-microbiota product for bone loss, and unrelated oncology and metabolic assets, with no other program targeting NAD+ metabolism as a route to symptom relief. That leaves the NAD+-estrogen hypothesis Elysium is pursuing without a direct mechanistic comparator to benchmark against in this population, an isolation that reflects an unexplored angle rather than a validated one.
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