Parkinson's Disease-Supplements-Coq-10 May Slow

Researchers who conducted national clinical trials at the University of California, San Diego’s School of Medicine, studied 80 patients with early Parkinson’s disease who did not yet need medications typically used to treat the disease (like Levodopa). Participants were randomly assigned to receive a placebo or CoQ10 four times a day at a dosage of 300, 600, or 1200 milligrams each day. Participants were regularly re-evaluated to assess the severity of the disease for a maximum of 16 months or until they needed treatment with medications used to treat the symptoms.

The results showed that by the eighth-month visit, the score for the group receiving the highest dosage (1200 milligrams per day) were substantially lower than the others groups. The lower score reflected less impairment and better function. The pattern persisted to the end of the study.

The results were hopeful, but the study’s coordinators caution that CoQ10 therapy needs to be tested in a larger trial with hundreds of patients before this treatment can be recommended.

“While it is tremendously encouraging that our results indicate that it is likely that coenzyme Q10 slows the progression of Parkinson’s disease, our study did not have sufficient numbers of patients to unequivocally prove that it does,” said the study’s principal investigator Clifford Shults, M.D., professor of neurosciences at UCSD’s School of Medicine. “It would be premature to recommend that patients with Parkinson’s disease take high doses of coenzyme Q10”.

Shults and the Parkinson Study Group are developing a proposal to carry out a larger study to confirm their results. Shults stated that he hoped this study would stimulate future research into treatments likely to slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease.

In Wisconsin in 1956 we isolated CoQ10 knowing it was a significant enzyme. After many attempts to find a reliable host in producing this powerful nutrient we utterly failed. Japanese researchers in 1959 purchased the patent from America, found a tobacco leaf is a perfect culture provider in producing this nutrient. There is no problem producing this enzyme off the tobacco leaf since no nicotine or other problematic substances leach into the development process of CoQ10. Soon after they developed this understanding, CoQ10 was made into a pharmaceutical level prescription medicine that has been widely used for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and as you now see, other diseases such as Parkinson’s. Living food diets that are green based provide much CoQ10, but there is often a need for supplemental use as an anti-oxidant in the war against catastrophic maladies.

Vol 22 Issue 1 Page 3