History of a Miracle Supplement

Coenzyme Q10, formerly known as ubiquinone, is essentially a fat-soluble vitamin or vitamin-like substance. Present in small quantities in a large variety of foods, it also is synthesized in body tissues. It is involved in several key steps in the production of energy within a cell, and it also functions as an antioxidant, a feature that explains its clinical advantages. It has no known toxicity or side effects.
The antioxidant or free radical-quenching properties of CoQ10 allow it to reduce oxidative damage to tissues. Such properties explain the interest in it as a means of slowing aging and age-related degenerative diseases.

It was first isolated from beef heart mitochondria in 1957 by Dr. Frederick Crane from Wisconsin, and soon afterwards by Professor R.A. Morton in the United Kingdom, who isolated it in rat liver. It was Morton who gave it the name ubiquinone, meaning ubiquitous quinone. In 1958, CoQ10 was synthesized by scientists at the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co.

The first medical use of CoQ7, a related compound, was reported in the mid-1960's by Professor Yuichi Yamamura in Japan, who used it in the treatment of congestive heart failure. Soon afterwards, Mellors and Tappel demonstrated that reduced CoQ6 was an effective antioxidant. In 1972, there was a report by Italian Gian Paolo Littarru and the late Karl Folkers from the University of Texas at Austin of CoQ10 deficiency in heart disease in humans. (The suffix 6, 7 or 10, by the way, refers to a five-carbon hydrocarbon called an isoprene that is attached to the quinone derivative; in mammals, the quinone derivative coenzyme Q usually contains 10 such units...thus, CoQ10).

By the mid-1970's, extensive medical research into CoQ10 became possible after the Japanese perfected the technology to produce it in pure form in large quantities. A few years later, it became possible to measure CoQ10 in blood and tissue by means of high-performance liquid chromatography.

A detailed history of the development and use of CoQ10 was written by Dr. Peter H. Langsjoen in 1994. He concluded that the "clinical experience with CoQ10 in heart failure is nothing short of dramatic, and it is reasonable to believe that the entire field of medicine should be re-evaluated in light of this growing knowledge. We have only scratched the surface of the biomedical and clinical applications of CoQ10 and the associated fields of bioenergetics and free radical chemistry."