Naked Science Forum

General Science => General Science => Topic started by: katieHaylor on 21/08/2018 09:46:30

Title: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: katieHaylor on 21/08/2018 09:46:30
Garth says:

I am aware of a variety of ozone therapies being offered for things, ranging from cleaning fruit and vegetables to reducing melanomas and treating prostate cancer. Ozone being introduced via IV or some form of liquid.

I do know it is a powerful oxidiser, but beyond that I cannot find the science in the equation. To my knowledge these treatments are not legal in the US but seem to be offered in many clinics around the world.

Is ozone treatment advised for anything?


Can you help?
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: RD on 21/08/2018 10:08:38
Ozone is a hazardous fake cancer-treatment, see ...
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cancer#List_of_quack_cancer_treatments

A world-famous ozone pusher was a British con-man called
Basil Earle Wainwright  (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/quack-doctor-faces-jail-for-discredited-aids-cure-634163.html), (a/k/a Dr Roderick Edward Stone).
He claimed it cured cancer & HIV/AIDS (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1685651).

Ozone doesn't help wound-healing either, see ...
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cca/doi/10.1002/cca.1111/full

Nor tooth-decay ... https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004153.pub2/full
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: chiralSPO on 21/08/2018 12:36:53
Ozone is a very reactive substance (it will even react with itself at sufficiently high pressures). It will oxidize any C=C double bonds instantaneously (even at –78 °C), producing extremely toxic (and potentially explosive) ozonides and malozonides (which can promptly react with proteins containing free thiols and free amines...)

Given the extreme reactivity of ozone, I cannot believe that it would have any selectivity for cancer or microorganisms over the rest of the human body, and therefore would not be effective as any treatment other than euthanasia... And given the history provided by RD, I am inclined to believe that anyone recommending ozone treatment is a quack or has been taken in by one.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Nika2003 on 21/08/2018 21:09:12
I know that this is a very complex topic. Ozone is toxic and dangerous for the environment. It is well known that ozone gas can damage the respiratory system. There is no safe or effective medical application of ozone
The US FDA and Health Canada do not allow ozone generator manufacturers to advertise or sell them for medical purposes. Although all this does not prevent naturopaths from acquiring them for use in clinical practice. . I've seen ozone advertised by naturopaths for chronic diseases, cancer treatment, Lyme disease, viral infections, chronic fatigue syndrome, autoimmune diseases, "detoxification" and "boosting the immune system."
Ozone can be administered to patients by placing gas through a skin infection or blowing it into the ear, nose, mouth, rectum or vagina.
Practice of autohemotherapy carries significant risks without any health benefits.
The legality of ozone therapy conducted by naturopaths varies in the United States and Canada, despite the fact that purchases of ozone generators for medical use are a federal crime. Some naturopathic states or provincial associations were able to write the use of ozone therapy in their licensing laws,
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: RD on 22/08/2018 07:34:25
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 22/08/2018 19:30:41
Just to add another  factor.
The dentist guy who thinks ozone is a miracle suggests ensuring that ozone is destroyed by using activated charcoal presumably doesn't know (or care) that the reaction of ozone with charcoal gives carbon monoxide which is also very toxic.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: SSAMC on 21/12/2018 19:09:31
Do yourselves a YUGE Favor, and do a
Search for "Ozone Therapy" and "National Institutes of Health". 

You will be amazed at the many positive scientific findings supporting Ozone Therapy.

Note: These studies are all small, humble endeavors, albeit quite positive, simply because BIG MONEY doesn't know how to PROFIT from it and won't sponsor any such studies,

but read the results for yourselves.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 21/12/2018 19:31:19
You will be amazed at the many positive scientific findings supporting Ozone Therapy.
I didn't see any.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: SSAMC on 21/12/2018 21:40:20
The MANY NIH studies typically say: "Despite compelling evidence, further studies are essential to mark it as a viable and quintessential treatment option in medicine." 

As I stipulated, the studies are under-funded and therefore too humble to draw strong conclusions.  Thus, the assertion that "Further Studies" are needed; otherwise the studies would say: "forget about it", like the Know-Nothings boldly insist.


Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 21/12/2018 22:50:56
I am a lot more inclined to believe the Cochrane library than you.
Would you like to tell us what your affiliation is?
Do you, for example, work for (or on behalf of) the elixir clinic?
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: SSAMC on 21/12/2018 23:05:41
I have no affiliation, much less with a so-called "elixir clinic" and you?

"The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives."

Their studies are humble, because they are self-funded, not funded by Big Pharma or any other Money-Bags;

but the results have been POSITIVE, not negative, not "maybe", not "neutral".

What kind of "Scientist" ignores NIH statements in favor of the "Cochrane library"?

Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 22/12/2018 10:10:55
"The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives."
Yes, but they didn't actually do the work. They hosted a web site that has a link to a report of the work.

Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: alancalverd on 25/12/2018 23:03:14
Ozone is excellent for debugging water for drinking and swimming. It was apparently used by German military surgeons for treating wound infections in WWI, and may make a comeback in the treatment of MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant infections.

I've seen anecdotal evidence of O3-enhanced healing of ligament damage. Patients consistently report relief of symptoms, but I can't think of a mechanism that explains it, and it's not easy to diagnose or monitor. Maybe it just destroys the pain nerves!
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: chiralSPO on 25/12/2018 23:23:49
I believe the article referred to by SSAMC is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5674660/

The authors of the study are listed as being affiliated with Universities and Hospitals in (greater) New York City (the article is accessible through the NIH, but was not done by NIH scientists).

This article is a review of the literature, rather than primary literature (the authors are not reporting novel findings, but rather have summarized the findings of previously published research).
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 26/12/2018 22:58:52
What kind of "Scientist" ignores NIH statements in favor of the "Cochrane library"?
One who understands that the NIH are not actually making a statement.
They are just providing a library service.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: alancalverd on 26/12/2018 23:23:02
Which is different from
Quote
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases in medicine and other healthcare specialties provided by Cochrane and other organizations.
how?
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 12/01/2019 21:50:29
Which is different from
Quote
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases in medicine and other healthcare specialties provided by Cochrane and other organizations.
how?
They don't  just do databases, they do
"and other healthcare specialties".

For example, they provide analysis of data.

It's like the difference between a library catalogue and a review article.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Rodin1880 on 12/01/2019 22:21:24
Personal Experience: My diabetic father developed a big black thing on the tip of his big toe... having always been concerned about amputation, he immediately went to the Doctor, and they cut off the top of his toe flat... They put him in an ozone chamber everyday for weeks and the tip rounded itself back out, appearing to have completely regrown, if in fact it didn't actually grow back... I also have an ozone maker that purifies my air and have for decades, every so often I stop using it for a while just to make sure it actually works... I believe Ozone gets a bad rap because it's contrary to the "Save The Earth" people's fights to eliminate everything that makes us an advanced species...
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: chris on 12/01/2019 23:24:29
@Rodin1880 That's great that your father's toe was saved; but that's not really the same as people advocating using ozone as a panacea; hydrogen peroxide is a fantastic antimicrobial agent that is widely used, and so is mercury. But I wouldn't advise anyone to inject themselves with either.

I'm happy to believe that ozone can cure everything, once I have seen the appropriate - and adequately powered and controlled - clinical trial to support the claim. Until then, I regard any such claim as a hypothesis, but nothing more.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: alancalverd on 13/01/2019 00:09:43
My concern with the Cochrane Institute has always been about its "synthesised research" approach - essentially, meta-analysis of peer-reviewed publications. It thus provides defence evidence of the prevailing consensus, but is both inherently insensitive to novelty, rare cases, disruptive or revisited technologies, and prone to inflate the significance of a single finding that has been reported in several journals or by several authors.

In my experience, publications of academic authors tend to be of poor readability, frequently statistically underpowered, and rarely cited, whilst well-funded industries provide polished copy with sound statistics and cite their own publications, thus adding meta-weight to the fairly obvious, at the expense of burying potentially more significant or less profitable research.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 13/01/2019 09:23:23
My concern with the Cochrane Institute has always been about ... prone to inflate the significance of a single finding that has been reported in several journals or by several authors.
So, it's a bit like reality then?
Things that are found repeatedly are generally true; things that are not repeatable are generally not true.
Thats- kind of- the point.


In my experience, publications of academic authors tend to be of poor readability
That's interesting. I generally don't have difficulty reading academic papers.

well-funded industries provide polished copy with sound statistics and cite their own publications,
I can't say I have checked, but I think the meta analyses  exclude things like trade journals where those sorts of articles get printed, and focus instead on academic reports.

Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: chris on 13/01/2019 09:59:29
Quote from: alancalverd on Today at 00:09:43
In my experience, publications of academic authors tend to be of poor readability
That's interesting. I generally don't have difficulty reading academic papers.

@Bored chemist - @alancalverd is supported by published evidence, although he might decide that the evidence is insubstantial or poorly powered  ;D

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/are-science-papers-getting-harder-read
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 13/01/2019 10:08:11
And yet, I read them without difficulty, so the fact remains they are not "of poor readability".
The data you cite shows a change. That change, in turn, shows me that they were easier to read before.
But that's not the same thing.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: chris on 13/01/2019 10:43:59
And yet, I read them without difficulty, so the fact remains they are not "of poor readability".
The data you cite shows a change. That change, in turn, shows me that they were easier to read before.
But that's not the same thing.

Agreed that readability and ability to comprehend are different things, but one of the other findings of William Thompson's study (cited above) was that the worsening of accessibility is not uniform across subjects. Perhaps the papers you are encountering are in a field less affected by this phenomenon? Apparently the worst culprits are cosmology and molecular biology... I think I agree!
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: alancalverd on 13/01/2019 11:34:35
My interpretation of readability has nothing to do with vocabulary or "reading age", but precision and lack of ambiguity. Admittedly most of my dealings are at the pre-publication phase of research grant and ethics applications and progress reports, but all too often I look at the final report and ask "what exactly have you discovered?"

My rule of thumb is that if a principal researcher cannot spell principal, the proposal should not be supported. This so far applies to 90% of academic submissions and less than 10% of those originating in industry. Too harsh? Well, I'd hate to be the patient or client of a professional who confused hypo with hyper, or M for m.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 13/01/2019 13:45:51
My interpretation of readability has nothing to do with vocabulary or "reading age", but precision and lack of ambiguity.

If we discount people who are researching principles then "principle researcher" is wrong, but not ambiguous.
(If we don't discount them, then "principal researcher" is also ambiguous- they may have meant "principle").

If you are confident in knowing they got the wrong spelling, then that spelling doesn't matter.
Too harsh? Well, I'd hate to be the patient or client of a professional who confused hypo with hyper, or M for m.
Me too.
But perhaps they muddled them because they were too busy focussing on something that doesn't matter.
If a paper is published in such a way that it's unclear then that's a sad comment on the author, their local proofreaders, the journal editors and others.

It's true that there's much more time (and thus money) spent on, for example, advertising blurb.
They are almost certain to spell "principal" correctly.
But I'm far from convinced that they are "more true"- and that's what I'm actually looking for in a publication.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: yor_on on 13/01/2019 20:23:37
Isn't that typical human behavior? The easier the text is to assimilate the less you expect from it. It's putting science into 'guilds', again :) .. I mean, what did you expect? That scientists was imported from fairy land? I call it human, strengthening your position in peer dominated fields.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: alancalverd on 13/01/2019 22:23:26
If you are confident in knowing they got the wrong spelling, then that spelling doesn't matter.
It matters that a Principal Scientist, with his grade written on the door and on his pay check, doesn't spot that he has just signed a document in which he has named himself Principle Scientist. A lot of good science derives from investigating anomalies, and a lot of good engineering derives from not tolerating them.

Advertising blurb isn't immune. A local sixth-form college has paid for a running ad screened on the Park & Ride buses. Nice photos, catchy text, elementary spelling error.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: alancalverd on 13/01/2019 22:38:22
Isn't that typical human behavior? The easier the text is to assimilate the less you expect from it. It's putting science into 'guilds', again :) .. I mean, what did you expect? That scientists was imported from fairy land? I call it human, strengthening your position in peer dominated fields.
Sir Lawrence Bragg's position, after the Military Cross, two Nobel Prizes, a knighthood, and the directorships of the National Physical Laboratory and the Cavendish Laboratory, was never in question. He regularly asserted in public that if you really understand something, you can explain it to a 7-year-old. I think that is a fair test of a scientific paper - the vocabulary may be recondite but the logic must be transparent and the conclusions unequivocal.

My worry is the plethora of papers that suggest the author himself doesn't understand  it.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: yor_on on 14/01/2019 01:16:30
You know Alan, I'm starting to get old, and as (mostly) everyone else at my, ahem, advanced age I tend to remember things being better before :) It may look slightly strange but I think it's true. One reason to people creating unreadable pieces I would guess as competition, it's a fiercer faster 'climate' now than it was when I was young. It's not so many 'ivory towers' left and scientists get bound to diverse projects etc. So what do you do when you want to impress your knowledge on someone. Well, you use the correct jargon , and as you find little time to really relax and think you instead of original thinking fill it with the right sounding words. A scientist is also a human, stuck in the same money producing processes as the rest of us.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: alancalverd on 14/01/2019 17:37:05
Actually, science is not the worst offender. Literary criticism has been described as "Several books of bad English written about a few pages of good English". I have no doubt that it exists in all other languages too.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Stephbaker on 17/01/2019 06:01:53
Ozone is a very reactive substance (it will even react with itself at sufficiently high pressures). It will oxidize any C=C double bonds instantaneously (even at –78 °C), producing extremely toxic (and potentially explosive) ozonides and malozonides (which can promptly react with proteins containing free thiols and free amines...)

Given the extreme reactivity of ozone, I cannot believe that it would have any selectivity for cancer or microorganisms over the rest of the human body, and therefore would not be effective as any treatment other than euthanasia... And given the history provided by RD, I am inclined to believe that anyone recommending ozone treatment is a quack or has been taken in by one.

Yes, how does ozone treatment even make sense? That just sounds wrong and hazardous
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: alancalverd on 17/01/2019 10:08:42
Obviousy the inhalation of pure ozone would do nothing but kill you. Same with pure oxygen at atmospheric pressure, or nitrogen. Therapeutic ozone is applied topically, to the surface of a wound or injected into a specific site.

The antiseptic and antibacterial properties of oxidants are well understood, with buckets of iodine and chlorhexidine applied to patients every day (though the sainted Cochrane points out that there have been no proper comparative controlled trials!). Topical ozone is just another oxidant.

The healing effect of irritants is less well understood, though often used. Chuck Yeager (Bell X1, sound barrier..) gave a good account in his autobiography of the daily removal of granular tissue (the usual bloody scab) which led to the smooth regrowth of most of his face, where natural healing would have left scars and wrinkles. There is much current research on irritant-loaded "scaffolds" implanted to promote the regrowth of bone and cartilage, and one application I have witnessed of ozone injected into the knee is supported by anecdotes of ligament recovery: 50 - 60% recovery from a generally intractable condition is not to be discounted if the concomitant risk is negligible.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: Bored chemist on 17/01/2019 22:10:57
if the concomitant risk is negligible.
And, just as soon as someone does a proper trial, we will know if it is or not.
Title: Re: What evidence is there for using ozone as a medical treatment?
Post by: alancalverd on 18/01/2019 00:07:44
There is a significant problem of setting up trials on minor knee injuries: there is huge variability of symptoms and causes, and in some cases, particularly removal of a displaced fragment of cartilage, there seems to be very little difference in reported outcome between actual and sham surgery. Added to this, there is a serious ethical dilemma about sham surgery which (a) exposes the patient to all the risks of open surgery with no intention to treat and (b) cannot be blinded.

An RCT with ozone injection poses less of an ethical problem as the reported complications appear to be negligible (the standard treatment is 3 injections about 10 days apart - if there were complications, nobody would turn up for the third) and the control would simply be to insert a hypodermic needle and make a buzzing noise. The only problem would be to recruit enough patients in the first place, but I may suggest it to a couple of practitioners.

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