18

Lung and Bronchial Diseases

Few clinical studies have been done on the impact of oxidative therapies on pulmonary diseases, primarily because most scientists believe that breathing air polluted with ozone is always bad for health. Unfortunately, this belief carries over to other applications of ozone. Yet practitioners have discovered that ozone—administered as autohemotherapy or rectal insufflation—can be very useful in treating a wide range of pulmonary diseases, including asthma, emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pulmonary fibrosis, and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Dr. Bocci believes that pulmonary diseases respond to ozone for numerous reasons. First, there is improved transport of oxygen with a consequent better oxygenation of ischemic tissues; the effects of lipid oxidation products (LOPs) and the release of prostacyclin, nitric oxide (NO), and interleukin-8 (IL-8) are able to enhance pulmonary function and reduce recurrent infections. Second, there are therapeutic effects of mild, calculated oxidative stress linked to repeated bland ozonated applications of authohemotherapy, which induce an adaptation to the chronic oxidative stress present in these diseases. Such adaptation is characterized by an intracellular enhancement of several antioxidant enzymes (SOD [superoxide dismutase], GSH-peroxidase [hepatic glutathione peroxidase], catalase, etc.) and, most importantly, heme oxygenase I, resulting in mild, continuous, stimulatory effects on the immune system. Dr. Bocci has also noted patient reports of frequent improvement of cenesthesia, the general feeling of inhabiting one’s body that arises from multiple stimuli from various bodily organs.¹ Of course, such therapy must be performed without the patient ever breathing a trace of ozone, which can be exceptionally harmful.

BRONCHIAL ASTHMA

Only a small number of ozone studies have been undertaken with patients suffering from bronchial asthma. However, during a research visit to Cuba in 1994, I was introduced to an eleven-year-old boy attending a special school for the hearing-impaired whose asthma had been cured with ozone. Ricardo was originally treated for hypacusis, a disease of the inner ear that causes deafness. The ozone treatments he received provided a modest degree of hearing improvement, which was consistent with the results of the other students of the school who were also given ozone for hypacusis. However, along with improved hearing, Ricardo’s parents and teachers noticed that his frequent asthma attacks gradually began to diminish, to the point that they almost completely disappeared.

Dr. Gilbert Glady, a French physician, reported his clinical experience with an asthma patient at the Eleventh Ozone World Conference, held in San Francisco in 1993 (the English in his written report has been corrected where necessary):

Mrs. Nicole B., born in 1947, had been suffering from bronchial asthma since 1981. She was treated with Lomudal and Aminophylline as well as with antibiotics every time she was suffering from ear, nose, or throat infections. The tests showed an allergy to house dusts. We met her for the first time in December 1987 at a period when she had attacks of asthma nearly every day. An ozone treatment involving alternate doses of minor autohemotherapy in the form of subcutaneous injections at the top of the lungs and major autohemotherapy was started in February 1988. . . .

After about ten sessions, the frequency of attacks of asthma had decreased substantially, although some secondary symptoms came up like moderate fever, moderate attacks of tetany [a nervous affection that can include numbness and tingling in the extremities], reintensification of asthma, and eczema. This was followed by general improvement.

The asthma vanished and the Lomudal treatment was stopped for good in November 1988, nine months after treatment began. Since then, this patient has not suffered from a single attack of asthma.²

Autohomologous immunotherapy (AHIT) has been used for patients suffering from bronchial asthma in Germany since 1987. Dr. Horst Kief, the developer of AHIT, reported on a study of sixty-five patients who were treated over a period of seven months. Dr. Kief found marked improvement in many patients, as indicated by a sharp decrease in or complete elimination of the medications they required to control asthma flares. Table 18.1 shows the results of his study.

Dr. Kief added: “It may be very encouraging that the consumption of systemic corticoids could be reduced by almost 90% (relative to the exclusive administration of this drug group) and of inhalant cortisone derivatives by more than 85%.”³

A more recent study, reported in the peer-reviewed Archives of Medical Research, was undertaken at the National Center for Scientific Research in Cuba. The goal was to determine the effect of ozone therapy on serum immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels, human leukocyte antigen DR (HLA-DR) expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), and the erythrocyte glutathione pathway in asthma patients. High IgE levels are common with people suffering from asthma.

The researchers worked with 113 asthma patients between the ages of fifteen and fifty. They were divided into three groups, with members of the first two groups treated using major autohemotherapy and the other group treated with rectal insufflation. Major autohemotherapy was administered at doses of 4 mg for the first group and 8 mg for the second group, with fifteen sessions per cycle; the third group received rectal insufflation at a dose of 20 mg, with twenty sessions per cycle. Blood tests were given before and at the end of each cycle, and lung function and symptoms tests were recorded at the beginning and after the third cycle of treatment.

By the end of the study, IgE and HLA-DR had decreased with all three treatments; increments in reduced glutathione, glutathione peroxidase, glutation reductase, and glutathione S-transferase were achieved with all treatments as well. Lung function and symptoms were “markedly” improved. However, the group receiving the higher concentration of ozone through autohemotherapy had the best results, followed by the group receiving lower-dose autohemotherapy and then the rectal insufflation group.

The researchers concluded: “This study demonstrates the effectiveness of ozone therapy in reducing IgE and inflammatory mediators along with the induction of antioxidant elements. The study raises the role of systemic ozone therapy in atopic asthma by means of its immunomodulatory and oxidative stress regulation properties.”⁴

A later double-blind study done by scientists at the National Center for Scientific Research in Cuba evaluated thirty-three patients suffering from severe bronchial asthma; all patients had low tolerance for exercise and often required four or more treatments with bronchodilators daily. Emergency room visits were frequent.

The patients were divided into two groups. Fifteen were treated with rectal oxygen-ozone insufflations for twenty sessions (five per week for four weeks) in addition to their regular asthma medications. The eighteen members of the control group were given twenty applications of rectal oxygen insufflations in addition to their normal medications over the same four-week period.

The researchers found that members of the ozone group experienced a marked improvement in their respiratory capacity, with reduced immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels (IgE plays a major role in the body’s hypersensitivity to allergens) and a reduction in their need for asthma medications. Among ozone patients, incidents of hoarseness and wheezing—two of the most common symptoms—fell by between 30 and 60 percent. The group treated with oxygen reported no change in respiratory capacity, overall symptoms, IgE levels, and the need for asthma medication.

When asked about their symptoms, all of the patients treated with ozone reported improvement, while 72.2 percent of the patients treated with oxygen reported no change in symptoms, and several reported a worsening of symptoms over the four-week period.⁵

TUBERCULOSIS

Studies in Russia have shown that ozone can be an important method of treatment for tuberculosis. One study, carried out by Dr. A. A. Priimak and his colleagues, investigated the impact of a gaseous ozone-oxygen mixture on Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MBT) and opportunistic microorganisms. One group of patients was given ozone therapy; the other group received traditional medical therapy.

The researchers found that after 15 and 30 minutes of exposure, the mixture of ozone and oxygen caused a “significant decrease” in the number of colonies of microorganisms as compared with the controls. They also observed that the ozone and oxygen mixture produced the highest effect of MBT suspension, which the researchers felt was probably related to a greater surface of ozone contact with a cell than with a dense medium, and higher concentration of ozone and its highly active radicals that arise from the treatment process. Specifically, after treatment with ozone, between 80 and 90 percent of the microbial cells lost their reproductive ability. They also found that the strains grown after ozone and oxygen action retained the drug sensitivity of the original strain. The researchers concluded, “The results suggest that the use of a gaseous ozone-oxygen mixture is promising in the treatment of tuberculosis to cleanse the destruction cavities and pleural empyemas [the presence of pus in a pleural cavity] including those of nonspecific etiology.”⁶

Another Russian study compared various treatments of tuberculosis patients suffering from pleural empyema. Surgery is often used to correct this problem. Fifty-five patients with pleural empyema received local washings of an ozonated solution with furacilin and chlorohexidine before surgery, as opposed to another group of fifty-nine, which received the medicated solutions without ozone. The researchers discovered that purulent postoperative complications among the group pretreated with ozone was 17.7 percent versus 30.4 percent for the controls; the treatment group also had reduced mortality of 9.5 percent.⁷

RESPIRATORY FAILURE

A group of Polish physicians evaluated the effectiveness of therapeutic ozone in treating patients who experience respiratory failure after they have been on mechanical respirators for a long length of time. The doctors observed: “Ozonotherapy application[s] improve pulmonary gas exchange [and] increase production of surfactant [and] alveoli elasticity” and noted that ozone’s bacteria- and virus-killing properties are useful in treating lung infections that are resistant to antibiotics. They concluded: “Ozonotherapy application in patients with severe respiratory failure gives a possibility for [the] rescue [of] human life.”⁸

PULMONARY EMPHYSEMA

A team of researchers from three Cuban institutions—the National Center for Scientific Research, the Victoria de Girón Institute of Basic and Preclinical Sciences, and the Center for Medical-Surgical Research—sought to assess the effects of rectal ozone therapy in patients with pulmonary emphysema.

Sixty-four patients between forty and sixty-nine years of age diagnosed with pulmonary emphysema were chosen for this study. They were randomly assigned to three groups: one group received rectal ozone in twenty daily sessions, another group received rectal medicinal oxygen, and the third group received no treatment. Treatments were repeated three months later in the first two groups. At baseline and at the end of the study, spirometry (used to assess how well your lungs work by measuring how much air you inhale, how much you exhale, and how quickly you exhale) and other clinical assessments were performed.

Fifty patients completed the protocol. Twenty received ozone therapy, twenty were given rectal oxygen, and ten didn’t receive any therapy. Before the first treatment, patients on ozone therapy had significantly lower values of forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1) and of forced vital capacity (how much air is exhaled). At the end of the treatment period, these parameters were similar in the three treatment groups: they only improved significantly in the group on ozone therapy. No differences were observed in other spirometric parameters. In contrast to the other groups, 40 percent of the subjects treated with ozone reported a decrease of emphysema symptoms, a finding the researchers also considered important.

The researchers concluded “Taking into account the positive results achieved in this study, we recommend the use of ozone therapy as a beneficial therapeutic alternative or as an adjuvant therapy to conventional treatment of patients with pulmonary emphysema.”⁹