In 1999, the journal Biofactors published a 12-week study of 22 people with left ventricular heart failure and found that those who took 200 milligrams daily of Co Q showed significant improvement compared with those who took a placebo. But for every study showing positive effects, there was usually another showing no beneficial results. In the most recent research, Stephen Gottlieb and his colleagues at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore randomly assigned 55 patients with congestive heart failure to receive either 200 milligrams of Co Q or a placebo daily. Proponents of Co Q say that the study included patients who were too sick to benefit from the supplement and that the dose was not large enough to show effects. And it found that coenzyme Q10 was of no benefit to these patients at all.
Some studies show benefits.
Others find no effect. Reports that coenzyme Q10 might somehow bolster the immune system and help the body thwart the bacteria that causes gum disease date from the 1970s. Maybe, although definitive answers won't be available until two NIH-funded studies are completed, which will take at least another year. There's some evidence that Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and some other neurological diseases may impair the mitochondria throughout the body, but particularly in nerve and brain cells. That's the hypothesis that we are working on.