Ubiquinol-10 and ubiquinone-10 levels in umbilical cord blood of healthy foetuses and the venous blood of their mothers

Abstract

Despite their being good markers of oxidative stress for clinical use, little is known about ubiquinol-10 (reduced coenzyme Q₁₀) and ubiquinone-10 (oxidized coenzyme Q₁₀) levels in foetuses and their mothers. This study investigates oxidative stress in 10 healthy maternal venous, umbilical arterial and venous bloods after vaginal delivery by measuring ubiquinol-10 and ubiquinone-10 levels. Serum ubiquinol-10 and ubiquinone-10 levels were measured by HPLC with a highly sensitive electrochemical detector. Maternal venous ubiquinol-10 and ubiquinone-10 levels were significantly higher than umbilical arterial and venous levels (all p < 0.001). However, the ubiquinone-10/total coenzyme Q₁₀ (CoQ₁₀) ratio, which reflects the redox status, was significantly higher in umbilical arterial and umbilical venous blood compared to maternal venous blood (all p < 0.001). The ubiquinone-10/total CoQ₁₀ ratio was higher in umbilical arterial than in umbilical venous blood (p < 0.01). The present study demonstrated that foetuses were under higher oxidative stress than their mothers.

Keywords::

• Coenzyme Q₁₀
• oxidative stress
• maternal blood
• ubiquinol-10
• ubiquinone-10
• umbilical cord blood

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the pregnant women who participated in this research, as well as Dr Mitsuhiko Koresawa, head nurse Hiduru Kimura, assistant head nurse Mitsue Nishibori, assistant head nurse Atsuko Koyama, and other staff members where the study was conducted.

Declaration of interest: This study was part of a research project founded by a grant from The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Grant-in Aid for Exploratory Research, 2007–2008, No19659578).

This paper was first published online on Early Online on 13 July 2010.