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Adjunct treatment with ozone to enhance therapy of knee osteoarthritis: preliminary results

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Abstract

Knee osteoarthritis (knee OA), commonly known as gonarthrosis, is a chronic pathology involving knee at the joint level causing progressive pain, stiffness and difficulty in ambulation and leg movements. So far in situ infiltration therapies such as platelet rich plasma, conditioned autologous serum or hyaluronic acid, provided some encouraging though limited hopes for a routinely recommended therapy for knee OA. Recent clinical successful observations about the use of whole autologous blood ozonated with a calibrated mixture of oxygen and ozone, has promoted the present research study, in order to treat knee OA. A number of 250 patients suffering with knee OA of different Ahlback scores, were treated with infiltration of ozonated blood and evaluated for their WOMAC and Lequesne indexes, pre- and post-treatment, to evaluate pain, disability and stiffness. Patients recovered about 50% of their health status, reducing pain, stiffness and disability by only 5 sessions, one/week, with 20 μg/ml O3 ozonated autologous blood knee infiltrations. The evidence asks for further supporting results yet encourages our efforts to go ahead in this research issue.

Key Points

•The oxygen-ozone therapy via ozonated blood infiltration was used in this study.

•Ozone reduced pain, disability, and stiffness in both female and male patients.

•The treatment with ozone improved WOMAC both in type I and type II Ahlback knee OA.

•The oxygen-ozone therapy via ozonated blood ameliorated Lequesne functional index.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr Francesca Turriceni for her technical support in elaborating data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Magenta Medical Center, Genoa, Italy

    Luigi Valdenassi & Debora Bellardi

  2. Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology, University of Caserta “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Caserta, Italy

    Marianna Chierchia

  3. Italian Scientific Society of Oxygen Ozone Therapy (SIOOT) and Master School of Oxygen Ozone Therapy, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Luigi Valdenassi, Sergio Pandolfi & Marianno Franzini

  4. Department of Engineering and Innovation Medicine (DIMI), University of Verona, Strada Le Grazie 8, 37134, Verona, Italy

    Salvatore Chirumbolo

Authors
  1. Luigi Valdenassi
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  2. Marianna Chierchia
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  4. Debora Bellardi
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  5. Salvatore Chirumbolo
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  6. Marianno Franzini
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Contributions

LV, DB, and MF conceived the research study, enrolled and selected patients, performed the research study, produced the results, and supervised the study; SC conceived and elaborated the biological basis, applied statistics and bibliographic search, supervised the experimental data, elaborated the same properly, wrote the manuscript, and held revision and submission; MC contributed to the clinical assessment of the investigated pathology and applied therapy; SP simply joined the study for consultation.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Salvatore Chirumbolo.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Each clinical outpatient signed an informed consent for the use of personal data in a research purpose and underwent the investigation following the Ethical Committee of our Communian Clinics, Bergamo, Italy, and the Declaration of Helsinki guidelines. All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations taken in charge by the International Scientific Society of Oxygen Ozone Therapy, in the IMEOF guidelines for the use of ozone in medicine. All experimental protocols were approved by IMEOF and SIOOT.

Consent for publication

Not applicable. This manuscript does not include either information or images that could lead to identification of a study participant, or names on results.

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None.

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Valdenassi, L., Chierchia, M., Pandolfi, S. et al. Adjunct treatment with ozone to enhance therapy of knee osteoarthritis: preliminary results. Clin Rheumatol 43, 2093–2101 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-024-06972-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-024-06972-x

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