Preliminary study shows high-dose coenzyme Q10 slows functional decline in Parkinson's...( 0 mg/day) being substantially lower tha...),Health

0 mg/day) being substantially lower than the other groups. The lower score reflected less impairment and better function. This pattern persisted to the end of the study. The benefit was seen in assessment of mental function and mood, activities of daily living and motor skills.

If the drug had merely been ameliorating symptoms while the disease continued unchecked to kill nerve cells the researchers would have expected the initial, first-month check-up to reveal improvement in the coenzyme Q10 groups. Since that was not the case, Shults hypothesized that the drug might have slowed the underlying progression of the disease over the 16-month period of the study. However, Shults cautioned that a study with a larger number of patients might reveal a small amelioration of symptoms early. Shults also stressed that the study was designed to look at the function of the patients and was not designed to look at whether groups treated with coenzyme Q10 did, in fact, have less damage to the nerve cells that are affected in Parkinson's disease. He and his colleagues hope to look at damage to the nerve cells in a larger study.

In appraising the results of the clinical trial, Shults noted that "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. 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. He added that an equally important outcome of the recently completed clinical trial was that it provided an efficient design for studies, such as this one, of drugs that might slow the progression of Parkinson's disease. The design was based on previous studies carried out by the Parkinson Study Group an
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Contact: Sue Pondrom
spondrom@ucsd.edu
619-543-6163
University of California - San Diego
14-Oct-2002

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