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Supplement with Q10 improves treatment of depression
The treatment of depression is more successful if patients also take a supplement containing 200 milligrams of Q10 daily in addition to their medication. This is apparent from an Iranian trial with 69 depressed individuals with bipolar disorder. The subjects were in a depressive phase.
Study
According to a Belgian study, published in Neuro-Endocrinology Letters in 2009, people with depression have less Q10 in their blood than people without depression. [Neuro Endocrinol Lett. 2009;30(4):462-9.] For this reason, and because Q10 supplementation alleviates depression in previously published small human studies, [J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2015 Jun;35(3):338-40.] pharmacologists from Hamadan University of Medical Sciences in Iran decided to test Q10 in a trial involving 69 people with depression.
The subjects suffered from bipolar disorder. During the study they were in a depressive phase.
For 8 weeks, the researchers gave half of their subjects a placebo daily. The other half received 200 milligrams of Q10 daily. The researchers used a product from Bonyad Salamat Kasra. [bonyankasra.com]
Results
The researchers measured the degree of depression in their subjects with a standardized questionnaire - more precisely, they used the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale [MADRS]. Below is how to interpret the MADRS scores.
The MADRS scores of the subjects in the Q10 group dropped more than the scores of the subjects in the control group, the figure above shows. The differences between the two groups were not really convincing.
More telling is the table below. Click on it for a larger version. The table shows the number of responders in both groups. In the Q10 group, 72 percent of the subjects were a responder, in the placebo group only 12 percent.
The researchers considered a subject a responder if their MADRS scores were at least halved.
Mechanism
The researchers suspect that Q10 makes brain cells function better because Q0 reduces the damage caused by free radicals.
Conclusion
"It appears that CoQ10 has the potential to be proposed as an effective therapeutic option in the improvement of depressive symptoms of the depression phase of bipolar disorder", the Iranians write.
Source:
J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2018 Oct;38(5):460-6.
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