What Is Ozone Therapy? Does It Help Cancer?

What Is Ozone Therapy?

Ozone therapy aims to produce an effect by administering oxygen-releasing substances to increase blood oxygen levels.

Where Did the Idea Originate?

Discovered in the mid-1800s, ozone's powerful oxidizing properties enabled successful disinfection of surgical instruments, operating rooms and drinking water. It was later tested in the human body on the theory that disease develops more readily in low oxygen and increasing bodily oxygen would combat disease and diseased cells. The discovery that cancer cells have lower respiration rates led to testing ozone for many diseases, particularly cancer. However, subsequent technological advances have shown that more oxygen does not cause cancer cells to disappear.

Ozone Therapy Trials

Studies have produced no scientific evidence of effectiveness in treating cancer or other diseases. Instead, many potential side effects, including deaths, have been reported. Respected international organizations warn patients that no evidence supports ozone for cancer and it may be harmful. These methods should therefore be avoided until research clarifies the unknowns and establishes possible benefits, side effects and risks.

Detailed Examination

Ozone therapy is an alternative medicine approach administering oxygen-releasing substances in different forms and routes to increase bodily oxygen. Also called oxygen therapy, oxidative therapy, oxygenation, hyperoxygenation or hydrogen peroxide therapy, it most often uses hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and ozone (O3). Because ozone, a chemically active oxygen form, is commonly used, the method is called ozone therapy.

It differs from ordinary medical oxygen use (increasing oxygen in inhaled air) and from hyperbaric oxygen using pressurized gas. Although forms and methods vary, ozone is most commonly mixed with gases or liquids and administered under pressure through the rectum, vagina or other cavities, or injected into muscle or beneath the skin.

In autohemotherapy, a practitioner adds ozone with a special device to blood taken from the patient, then returns it. Various oxygen therapies are promoted as alternatives for dozens of diseases including certain cancers, asthma, emphysema, AIDS, arthritis, cardiovascular diseases, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. No accepted scientific evidence shows they cure these conditions. A few positive case reports and publications are highly questionable.

A Brief History of Ozone Therapy

Ozone (O3) is a highly energetic form of atmospheric oxygen consisting of three oxygen atoms. Its powerful oxidizing effect makes it an effective disinfectant. Discovered in the mid-1800s, it was first used in 1856 to disinfect surgical instruments and operating rooms. In the late 1800s it began disinfecting drinking water; in World War 1 it was used for wound disinfection, frostbite and poison-gas effects. Claims of blood purification in Germany in the mid-1800s attracted interest in bodily use. By the 1920s, ozone and hydrogen peroxide were tested for influenza and peroxide injections in a viral pneumonia epidemic, but there is no evidence of benefit.

The idea of ozone's effectiveness in cancer arose in 1919 when Dr. William F. Koch claimed a single toxin caused cancer and removing it could prevent or reverse the disease. He claimed to develop an oxygen compound called glyoxylide for intramuscular injection. Later reports found it had "no value for cancer diagnosis, treatment, relief or cure,” and theoretical physical chemists showed the claimed chemical structure could not exist. Dr. Koch neither disclosed its production process nor demonstrated its existence.

Today's practitioners claiming cancer effectiveness mainly rely on Dr. Otto Warburg's cancer theories. In the 1930s, Warburg, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1931 for respiratory enzyme research, discovered cancer cells had lower respiration rates than others. He inferred they grew in low oxygen and increasing oxygen would harm or kill them. However, technical advances since then show that more oxygen does not eliminate cancer cells. The method is also claimed to increase energy in all cells, stimulate antioxidant production and strengthen immunity. These claims likewise lack scientific evidence.

What Are the Potential Harms?

Ozone therapy, lacking reliable scientific evidence of benefit in the human body, can instead cause harm. Dynamically unstable ozone has dangerous bodily effects. Medical literature even includes patient deaths directly linked to administering oxygen-releasing substances.

• Ozone introduced into blood can generate tissue-damaging free oxygen products, triggering diseases and worsening existing ones.
• Inhaled ozone also damages lungs. High levels from carbon arc lamps are known to damage cinema projectionists' pleura; the literature calls this “projectionist's lung.”
• Hydrogen peroxide, another compound used and usually sold in concentrated solutions, can cause vomiting, severe throat and stomach burning and even death if swallowed.
• Eye contact can damage the cornea and cause blindness; skin contact can cause blistering and burns.
• Injected hydrogen peroxide can create oxygen bubbles blocking blood flow and causing gangrene and death.
• A study published in 1993 found research evidence that excess tissue oxygen can damage genetic material and cause abnormal growth.
• A study published in 2001 stated that advocates underestimate risks, reporting numerous serious effects including hepatitis and at least five deaths.

Research on Ozone Therapy in Cancer

Available scientific evidence does not support claims that increasing bodily oxygen damages or kills cancer cells. Raising oxygen around cells in a tumor's center is difficult because blood flow is poor.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), first in 1976 and again in 2006, stated that ozone is toxic and lacks evidence of safety in medical use. Studies combining oxygen therapy with radiotherapy and chemotherapy found no clear benefit. Injecting hydrogen peroxide directly into tumors or blood has also shown no benefit.

In a study in 2008, some rabbit tumors disappeared spontaneously without treatment, more disappeared with normal oxygen, and still more with ozone. However, these tumors' relationship to human cancers remains unproven.

A review in 2001 concluded: "Few comprehensive clinical studies exist; published studies have not demonstrated effectiveness, and ozone therapy should be avoided until more positive evidence emerges."

Conclusion

Available evidence does not support administering oxygen-releasing chemicals as effective cancer treatment, and it may be dangerous. No health authority or medical association in any English-speaking country has approved therapeutic ozone use. Many American states prohibit marketing ozone generators and medical use, even for clinical trials and research.

The American Cancer Society and many other leading organizations also warn patients, insisting there is no evidence of effectiveness in cancer and harmful effects may occur. Presented as a miracle and claimed effective against many diseases, this therapy is currently recommended for no patient or disease, not only cancer.

Although it is not prohibited in our country, it is viewed as easy income and a commercial sector, with rapidly increasing treatment centers. These methods should nevertheless be avoided until research clarifies the unknowns and establishes possible benefits, side effects and risks.