Objective: Diabetes is a chronic disease that causes the development of microalbuminuria. CoQ10 deficiency is common in people with type 2 diabetes. This study aims to evaluate whether coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) levels are a risk factor for diabetes and microalbuminuria in newly diagnosed diabetes and advanced microalbuminuria.

Material and Method: The study was conducted with patients who came to the internal medicine outpatient clinic. Plasma CoQ10 and malondialdehyde (MDA) values of 90 people in total, including 30 people in each group, newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetes (Group D), diabetes mellitus with microalbuminuria (Group M), and the control group (Group C) were examined.

Results: There was no difference between plasma CoQ10 and MDA levels of newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients and those with microalbuminuria (p>0.05). There was a negative correlation between CoQ10 and fasting glucose and HbA1c in all groups (p<0.05). A positive correlation was observed between CoQ10 and MDA (p<0.05). CoQ10 level of the control group was found to be higher than Group D and M (p<0.05); the difference between Group M and Group D was not significant (p>0.05). As a result of regression analysis, increasing the CoQ10 value was found to have a protective effect on the risk of diabetes (95 %CI: p=0.005).

Conclusion: This study showed that individuals with low blood sugar and HbA1c had high CoQ10 levels. We think that CoQ10 can be considered a risk factor for diabetes, and further studies examining total CoQ10 and ubiquinol/ ubiquinone ratio would be beneficial.

Coenzyme Q10 Malondialdehyde Microalbuminuria Oxidative stress Type 2 diabetes