Novel application of ozone therapy for current and emerging diseases

Ozone (O₃) therapy has been studied for more than a century and has been well established as an effective method to disinfect and treat disease (Juchniewicz and Lubkowska, 2020). O₃ therapy, sometimes referred to as oxygen-ozone therapy, is the administration of a mixture of oxygen and ozone (Alberto-Hernández et al, 2020). While ozone is a molecule consisting of three oxygen atoms, two of these three make up a stable pair (O₂), which is accompanied by a third unstable atom, giving the therapy its beneficial effects (Hernández et al, 2020).

In 1929, a book entitled ‘Ozone and its therapeutic actions’ was published, detailing more than 100 diseases that could be treated by O₃ therapy (Juchniewicz and Lubkowska, 2020), and our knowledge of its uses in healthcare has been gradually increasing ever since. Diseases or conditions which have been treated or experimented with using ozone treatment are infected wounds, circulatory disorders, geriatric conditions, macular degeneration, viral diseases, rheumatism/arthritis, cancer, AIDS (Elvis and Ekta, 2011), as well as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and other emerging coronaviruses, which is of course of great interest to researchers during the current COVID-19 pandemic (Sunnen, 2013).