Ozone and oxidation therapies as a solution to the emerging crisis in infectious disease management: a review of current knowledge and experience.

Medicine faces crisis with emerging "super bugs," lethal viruses (Ebola), and stealth pathogens such as tick-borne infections. Thousands are dying worldwide of once easily treatable diseases. Ozone therapy, extensively studied, may be a valuable adjunctive or stand-alone therapy. Ebola again ravages Africa with over 2000 already dead, carrying a 65% mortality rate. The world desperately needs safe, inexpensive and effective anti-infective therapy to which microbes will not develop resistance. Oxidation therapies have shown an extremely high safety profile, lacking credible reports of significant injury beyond vein irritation. Ozone therapy, the most studied and least expensive to perform, is in itself a germicide, not an antibiotic, and improves several physiological parameters essential for infection defense. Recent reports indicate very favorable responses to both bacterial and viral disease, inclusive of Ebola. Despite lack of commercial profitability (not patentable), medicine would do well to revisit its pre-antibiotic era oxidation therapy roots, especially ozone in the current crisis.