The effects of systemic ozone application and hyperbaric oxygen therapy on knee osteoarthritis: an experimental study in rats

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the effects of systemic medical ozone (O3) application and hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy on surgically induced knee osteoarthritis (OA) in a rat model. Materials and methods: We performed anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) in order to create experimental OA in the right knees of 27 male rats. The left knee joints of all rats were sham-operated without ACLT as the negative control group. The rats were randomly assigned into three groups: (1) control group, which received no treatment; (2) O3 group, which received intraperitoneal 30 μg medical O3; (3) HBO group, which received HBO therapy for 60 minutes twice a day. We sacrificed the rats on the tenth week after the operation. We evaluated the degree of OA using Mankin scores. Results: As a result of histopathological examination, the mean Mankin scores in the right knees with ACLT were 8.17 ± 2.12 in the control group, 6.22 ± 1.56 in the HBO group, and 4.72 ± 1.30 in the O3 group. The differences between the O3 group and the HBO group and the O3 group and the control group were found to be statistically significant (p 0.001, p 0.039, respectively). There was no difference between the HBO group and the control group (p 0.086). Conclusions: The results of the present study show that systemic medical O3 application was more effective than HBO therapy and may reduce development of cartilage damage and prevent OA formation.