Quasi-Total Body Exposure to O₂-O₃ (BOEX)

Abstract

Some six years ago, we raised the possibility of exposing the body (excluding the head and neck to avoid pulmonary toxicity) in an ozone-resistant container (even a very large polyethylene bag could be used) for patients who refused rectal insufflation and for those who had no pervious venous access for O₃-AHT or EBOO (Bocci 1996c,d). However several problems must be evaluated:

• 1) Is ozone as toxic for the skin as it is for the respiratory mucosa (Menzel, 1984 Lippman, 1989; Devlin et al., 1991; Kelly et al, 1995; Chen and Qu, 1997)? In common with ozone, chronic UV irradiation of the skin generates ROS, which after life-long exposure can result in skin changes such as wrinkles, pigmented spots and possibly cancer. Interestingly, Maeda et al. (1991) showed that hairless mice initially enhance defence mechanisms, but these deteriorate later with prolonged irradiation. Further studies have shown that both ozone treatment and UV-irradiation of epidermal layers of murine and human skin cause peroxidation and depletion of vitamins C and E (Thiele et al., 1997a,b; Podda et al., 1998; Fuchs and Kern, 1998). It has also been shown that these oxidizing agents, hence ROS, activate NFKB and activator protein-1 (AP-1), but that LA, NAC, Trx and Selenium can inhibit the activation to a large extent and induce adaptive protection, such as over-expression of MnSOD and GSHPx as a response to oxidative damage (Haas et al., 1998; Saliou et al., 1999; Meewes et al., 2001; Didier et al., 2001).