Benefits of Ozone on Mortality in Patients with COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Small Studies Found Benefit Yet Adjunctive Therapy Not Advanced to Large, Multicenter Trials

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

I attended an integrative medicine meeting recently and one of the speakers said that ozone was one of the most important tools in his practice. While this is a very broad topic with > 4000 papers listed in the National Library of Medicine with the MESH term “ozone therapy,” Hu et al briefly summarized:

“Ozone is a molecule composed of three oxygen atoms and a component of the atmosphere in nature, which has a strong oxidizing action. Ozone has a high-energy, variable molecular structure under normal temperature and is quickly and spontaneously decomposed into O₂ and a single oxygen atom (O). It has strong activity in oxidation and a strong bactericidal effect on bacteria and viruses.^10,11 Ozone therapy inactivates bacteria by disrupting their cell envelope through oxidation of phospholipids and lipoproteins, inhibits fungi growth, damages the capsid of viruses, and upsets the reproductive cycle by disrupting the virus-to-cell contact with peroxidation.¹² Oxygen-ozone therapy causes an increase in the rate of red blood cell glycolysis, causing the stimulation of 2,3-diphosphoglycerate, which leads to an increase in oxygen released to the tissues.¹³”

Wu J, Tan CS, Yu H, Wang Y, Tian Y, Shao W, Zhang Y, Zhang K, Shao H, Ni G, Shen J, Galoforo AC, Wu Q, Ming D. Recovery of Four COVID-19 Patients via Ozonated Autohemotherapy. Innovation (Camb). 2020 Nov 25;1(3):100060. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2020.100060. Epub 2020 Nov 4. PMID: 33169118; PMCID: PMC7609231. Manjunath SN, Sakar M, Katapadi M, Geetha Balakrishna R. Recent case studies on the use of ozone to combat coronavirus: Problems and perspectives. Environ Technol Innov. 2021 Feb;21:101313. doi: 10.1016/j.eti.2020.101313. Epub 2020 Dec 13. PMID: 33344687; PMCID: PMC7733684.

Innovative physicians, from many parts of the world trialed ozone in hospitalized patients some of whom had 4-6 weeks in the hospital with acute COVID-19. Shang et al performed a meta-analysis of very small studies: