Ozonized water, background, general use in medicine and preclinic support

Background

Ozonated water - water that has been infused with dissolved ozone gas - has been used across a range of clinical and industrial settings for decades, yet much of the supporting evidence has remained scattered across regional and speciality-specific literature. This 2019 review set out to consolidate published findings, tracing use of ozonated water from local infection control and wound care through to dental medicine, gastric applications and balneotherapy (mineral bath treatments), with the aim of giving practitioners a single reference point on where the preclinical and clinical evidence stood at the time.

Study design

The paper is a narrative literature review rather than a randomised trial. The author searched MEDLINE and the Zotero ISCO3 database - a curated ozone-therapy reference library maintained by the International Scientific Committee of Ozone Therapy - for publications on ozonated water dated between 1980 and 2018. Findings were grouped by area of application, including infection control, wound and burn care, dental use, gastric ingestion, and balneotherapy, rather than pooled statistically, and no new laboratory or clinical experiments were carried out for this paper.

Findings

Across the studies reviewed, ozonated water was most consistently reported for controlling local infections, including leg ulcers, pressure sores, fungal infections, and herpes simplex and herpes zoster lesions, as well as burns. Other applications documented included pain relief and anti-inflammatory effects in acute and chronic injuries, support for tissue repair, intraoperative rinsing during surgery, dental uses such as disinfection and oral hygiene, and, when ingested, effects on gastric conditions. The review also noted longstanding use of ozonated water in balneotherapy for circulatory complaints. Because the paper synthesises findings from many separate sources rather than a single dataset, no head-to-head statistical comparisons were reported.

What the authors concluded

The author concluded that the preclinical and clinical literature reviewed supports the use of ozonated water in medicine, citing accumulating evidence for its role in infection control, wound healing, and dental and topical applications, alongside a generally favourable safety profile in the doses and forms covered.

Limitations of this study

As a narrative review rather than a systematic review or meta-analysis, this paper did not apply pre-set inclusion criteria, formally assess the quality of the studies it drew on, or pool results statistically, so its conclusions are best read as a synthesis of existing literature rather than new experimental evidence. Many of the underlying studies referenced are older, small in scale, or drawn from a mix of clinical and preclinical settings, so the strength of evidence varies considerably by application. Ozonated water should be considered a complementary, evidence-informed measure to discuss with a qualified health professional, rather than a substitute for medical care.