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Post-RM discussion

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Late comment I am the person who started this mess (though in my very stubborn opinion, I still believe that I cleared it). I can see that Mdewman6 correctly sees that "vitamin B3" and "nicotinic acid" are distinct, so I would like to once again outline the mess and explain my view on the "ideal situation". I hope this is not seen as an attempt at a Last Word -- I welcome everyone to throw question at me so we can, maybe, get it fixed once and for all. And I hope I'm not counting as adding further edits, because this is outside of the green box!

  • The vitamin sense (vitamin B3 (Q30715691)) is unambiguously specified with "vitamin B3", but a quick look at how food is labeled in regulations and, well, cereal boxes will show that "niacin" would be the more proper, WP:COMMONNAME choice. Indeed, the word "niacin" was specifically coined from "nicotinic acid vitamin".
  • The one specific compound sense (nicotinic acid (Q134658)) would be unambiguously specified by, as A455bcd9 notes, "nicotinic acid". Among the possible forms of the vitamin, this substance is the only one that acts as a lipid-modifying medication. The trouble is that American medicine have decided to also use the name niacin for this substance, even in the context of the lipid-modifying medicine. And we all know how influential American terminological decisions are.

My ideal state for the pages is therefore:

I executed the split partly because I judged, from the many discussions around Archive 2, that people do realize these two are distinct things and find the intermingling confusing. Nicotinic acid was unavailable for move, hence the pretty screwed-up parentheticals.--Artoria2e5 🌉 22:44, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If anything, I would be okay with moving niacin to nicotinic acid and moving niacin (disambiguation) to niacin. But regardless, if the status quo is unsatisfactory, go ahead and start another RM, but make sure to include all necessary moves in a single request (see WP:EXPLICIT), so we have one discussion. Mdewman6 (talk) 23:19, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this.
Rename this article to "nicotinic acid", as this is the INN for the substance, and there is no confusion about it. In the article we can just mention that niacin is the USAN name for "nicotinic acid".
Move Niacin (disambiguation) to Niacin.
And I think the "Vitamin B3" article should be keep with that name to avoid confusion, and explain in the lede that it is also referred as Niacin.
-- Arthurfragoso (talk) 06:15, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sustained-release vs. extended-release

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The article seems to describe sustained-release (SR) niacin and extended-release (ER) niacin as the same thing, but reference 15 ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548176/ ) seems to indicate that SR niacin and ER niacin are actually two different products, with SR niacin being available over the counter while ER niacin is prescription-only and is what is sold under the name Niaspan, and SR having a much higher risk of liver toxicity. I can't seem to disentangle which is which and what they're each made of enough to edit this into the article myself. (This might be useful, though I'm not sure https://www.ajmc.com/view/sep02-145ps308-s314 . ) Wombat140 (talk) 05:34, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Corn

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No article referring to maize should use the word 'corn'. It's confusing outside of North America and surely all North Americans know what maize is, which is unambiguous. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Names 84.203.21.239 (talk) 17:37, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Second paragraph of Vitamin deficiency section has "maize (corn)" I changed the one sentence's use of "corn" after that to "maize". Also fixed in the Sources table. David notMD (talk) 18:15, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Niacin definition disagreement between institutions

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I noticed in Brazil that there were some supplements that had niacin in the nutritional table, but in the ingredients it says it is actually nicotinamide.

I was sure that niacin meant nicotinic acid, so I emailed a big supplement company here. They replied to me pointing to a food/supplement labeling legislation that in summary says that niacin can refer to either nicotinic acid or nicotinamide:

  • ANVISA (2021-10-15). Instrução Normativa - IN Nº 28, de 26 de julho de 2018 (Com emendas) [Regulatory Instruction - No. 28, of 26 July 2018 (with amendments)] (PDF) (Report) (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2024-12-12. Retrieved 2024-12-12.

Brazil usually just mirror those kind of standards from US, so what does the FDA says?

"(...) This results in the following order for vitamins and minerals: Vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, folate and folic acid, vitamin B12, (...) The (b)(2)-dietary ingredients shall be listed according to the nomenclature specified in § 101.9 or in paragraph (b)(2)(i)(B)(2) of this section." 21 CFR 101

"The term niacin refers to nicotinamide (nicotinic acid amide-NAD), nicotinic acid (pyridine-3-carboxylic acid), and derivatives that exhibit the biological activity of nicotinamide."

The last document also mention some curious things:

  • "niacin" (...) "had its unit of measure established in the 1989 RDA as “Niacin Equivalent”"
  • "While the unit of measurement for the RDI for niacin is listed as Niacin Equivalents (i.e., mg NE) in § 101.9(c)(8)(iv), only the amount “mg” will continue to be declared in labeling."
  • NE = Niacin Equivalents, 1 mg NE = 1 mg niacin = 60 mg tryptophan (see § 101.9(c)(8)(iv) (footnote 5))
  • "Furthermore, the amino acid tryptophan is available for conversion to NAD once protein synthesis needs are met and thus can contribute to meeting the RDA for niacin (Ref. 1). The tryptophan-to-niacin inter-conversion was considered previously in setting the RDA for niacin (Ref. 4). Therefore, the RDA for niacin is expressed in Niacin Equivalents (NE), allowing for the conversion of tryptophan to niacin (mean value of 60 mg tryptophan is equivalent to 1 mg of niacin)"
  • mg NE = mg niacin + (mg tryptophan ÷ 60)

Okay, so maybe the FDA could be wrong? What academic papers say? Doing a quick search, I find that there are papers aligned with the FDA saying that niacin refers to both nicotinic acid and nicotinamide.[1][2][3][4][5]

And there are also papers aligned with the current wikipedia article, saying that niacin refers only to nicotinic acid, but not to nicotinamide.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]

So then I find out that niacin is the USAN name of nicotinic acid, so it is the term used in some chemists websites.[15][16]

  • Niacin (nye’ a sin). USP. C6H5NO2. 123.11. [Nicotinic Acid is INN and JAN.] (1) 3-Pyridinecarboxylic acid; (2) Nicotinic acid. CAS-59-67-6. Antihyperlipidemic; vitamin (enzyme co-factor). Niacor (Upsher Smith); Niaspan (KOS); Nicolar (Sanofi Aventis); Wampocap (Medpointe)
  • Niacinamide (nye" a sin’ a mide). USP. C6H6N2O. 122.12.[Nicotinamide is INN and JAN.] (1) 3-Pyridinecarbox-amide; (2) Nicotinamide. CAS-98-92-0. Vitamin (enzyme co-factor).

-- from "2007 USP Dictionary of USAN and International Drug Names"

But nutritionists refer to Vit B3 as niacin, as we can see in the documents by nutritional institutions:


What a mess! Different institutions using a different definition!

We should improve this article to try to explain this messy confusion.

-- Arthurfragoso (talk) 04:18, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The NIH-ODS fact sheet - which represents the authoritative 1998 Institute of Medicine monograph (followed by many countries), explains it clearly as "Niacin (also known as vitamin B3) is one of the water-soluble B vitamins. Niacin is the generic name for nicotinic acid (pyridine-3-carboxylic acid), nicotinamide (niacinamide or pyridine-3-carboxamide), and related derivatives, such as nicotinamide riboside." This seems adequately stated in the lede where I updated and reapplied the NIH ref. Zefr (talk) 04:44, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Adequately stated? The lede says "Niacin, also known as nicotinic acid". -- Arthurfragoso (talk) 05:33, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More appropriate for the Definition section than the Lead. David notMD (talk) 17:18, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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