Ozone or trioxygen (O3) is a triatomic molecule, consisting of three oxygen atoms. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic O2.
A minimally invasive interventional radiology treatment-that safely and effectively uses oxygen/ozone to relieve the pain of herniated disks-will become standard in the United States in the next few years, predict researchers at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 34th Annual Scientific Meeting. In a related study, the interventional radiologists examined just how ozone relieves the pain associated with herniated disks.
Oxygen/ozone therapy involves injecting a gas mixture of oxygen and ozone into a herniated disk. The treatment can limit pain and inflammation by reducing the disk's volume. Currently, open diskectomy and microdiskectomy (both involving removal of disk material through an incision) are the standards in surgical treatment for herniated disk.
"Ozone shrinks disk volume; this is why it provides pain relief," said Kieran J. Murphy, M.D., interventional neuroradiologist and vice chair and chief of medical imaging at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose second study explored the mechanism of why oxygen/ozone treatment works.
Much research in oxygen/ozone treatments has been done by interventional radiologists in Italy, said Murphy, indicating that as many as 14,000 individuals have received this treatment abroad over the past five years.
Ozone, along with reactive forms of oxygen such as superoxide, singlet oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, and hypochlorite ions, is naturally produced by white blood cells and other biological systems (such as the roots of marigolds) as a means of destroying foreign bodies. Ozone reacts directly with organic double bonds. Also, when ozone breaks down to dioxygen it gives rise to oxygen free radicals, which are highly reactive and capable of damaging many organic molecules. Ozone has been found to convert cholesterol in the blood stream to plaque (which causes hardening and narrowing of arteries).
