MONDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) -- Treating Parkinson disease patients with daily doses of coenzyme Q10 appears to have no impact on their symptoms, according to the results of a randomized trial published May 14 in the Archives of Neurology.
Alexander Storch, M.D., of the Technical University of Dresden in Dresden, Germany, and colleagues conducted a study of 131 Parkinson disease patients who were on stable antiparkinsonian treatment and who had no motor fluctuations. The patients were randomized to three 100-mg doses per day of coenzyme Q10 or placebo for three months. Symptoms were evaluated every month.
The placebo and treatment groups had similar changes in their symptom scores on the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale. The study "does not support the hypothesis that restoring the impaired energy metabolism of the diseased dopaminergic neurons leads to symptomatic benefits in Parkinson disease," the authors conclude.
"Future studies will need to explore the protective effects of coenzyme Q10 at the highest effective dose (equivalent to about 2,400 mg/day of a standard formulation) over a long treatment period and in a large cohort of patients both sufficient to clearly define the protective potential of this compound in Parkinson disease," they add.
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