Controversy
Although Nature Magazine published the 2003 paper by Kasahara and Kato which essentially stated that PQQ was a new vitamin, they also subsequently published, in 2005, an article by Chris Anthony and his colleague L.M. Fenton of the University of Southhampton which states that the 2003 Kasahara and Kato paper drew incorrect and unsubstantiated conclusions. On his website, Anthony discusses the Nature Magazine publications:
When I pointed out to the journal Nature that their high reputation was being used to justify investments of millions of dollars in the development of PQQ as a vitamin, they investigated the original paper, agreed with our objections and published our argument against it (Felton & Anthony, Nature Vol. 433, 2005). They also published (alongside ours) a paper by Rucker disagreeing with the conclusions of Kasahara and Kato on nutritional grounds, concluding “that insufficient information is available so far to state that PQQ uniquely performs an essential vitamin function in animals.Anthony further states on his website that "No mammalian PQQ-containing enzyme (quinoprotein) has been described" and that PQQ therefore cannot be called a "vitamin".
Read more about this topic: Pyrroloquinoline Quinone
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