Blood Ozone and Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation

Table of Contents

1. What the Presentation Said
2. What These Treatments Are
3. Studies of Blood Oxygenation and Ozonation
4. Ozone and Cancer Research
5. Reported Harms of Ozone Therapy
6. The United States Rule on Ozone
7. Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation
8. Extracorporeal Photopheresis: The Approved Light-on-Blood Treatment
9. Heavy Metals and Microplastics
10. One Hour, Two to Three Litres, and How Often
11. How the Claim Compares With the Research
12. What Is Not Known
13. Connections
14. Key Research Papers
15. Featured Videos

What the Presentation Said

Near the end of the talk, the speaker described a treatment the clinic pairs with a frequency device: extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation. “Extracorporeal” means outside the body. As described, blood leaves through a needle in one arm, passes through a filter with a continuous flow of oxygen and ozone gas, passes an ultraviolet light unit, and returns through a needle in the other arm. The speaker showed a photograph of themself receiving it.

The points made, in paraphrase:

• The session lasts one hour, and the speaker said the patient’s total blood volume passes through the system in that time, which the speaker put at about two to three litres.
• Ultraviolet light is added — the speaker named ultraviolet A — and was described as strongly antimicrobial: it was said to deactivate viruses, bacteria, yeast and parasites and to strengthen the immune system.
• The treatment was said to improve oxygenation and circulation, support immune function, reduce inflammation, assist “blood detoxification”, support cell energy, and support recovery from chronic conditions such as cancer and autoimmune disease.
• The speaker said the treatment is potentially even removing microplastics.
• A slide was described as data showing the treatment removes heavy metals — mercury by 70%, cadmium by 47%, and aluminium. The speaker added that 99.9% of the clinic’s patients, and of the general population, carry heavy metals, and linked metals, parasites and cancer together. No study was named for these figures.
• In the question period, the speaker described how often it is given: one to two sessions a week during a three-week clinic stay (typically four to five sessions, sometimes three), a series of five to seven at once a week as the speaker’s own suggestion, and once a month for the speaker personally, adjusted to blood tests and the state of the patient’s veins.

The presentation did not cite a published study for any of these points. The sections below set out what the published research does and does not show.

What These Treatments Are

“Ozone therapy” is a family of practices, not one treatment. Ozone is a gas made of three oxygen atoms; it is highly reactive, and in blood it oxidises fats and proteins (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2005). The main ways it is given to the blood are:

• Major autohaemotherapy — a portion of the patient’s blood is drawn into a bag, mixed with an oxygen–ozone gas, and dripped back into a vein. A 2005 review by the Italian group that developed the blood-ozone machine put the amount treated this way at about 250 millilitres (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2005).
• Direct intravenous ozone — ozone gas injected straight into a vein. This is the form behind two of the case reports of stroke-like injury described below.
• Extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation — a dialysis-like circuit. Blood is pumped out of a vein, through a gas-exchange cartridge where an oxygen–ozone mixture flows on the other side of a membrane, and back into another vein, with an anticoagulant (a drug that stops clotting) in the line. The developers reported treating up to 4,800 millilitres of blood in one hour this way (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2005).

“Ultraviolet blood irradiation” is a separate idea: blood passes through a clear tube or chamber and is exposed to ultraviolet light before being returned. It was widely used in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s (Hamblin, 2017). Some clinics combine it with the ozone circuit, as the presentation described.

Both are different from extracorporeal photopheresis, a hospital treatment that also exposes blood cells to ultraviolet A light, but only after a light-activated drug has been added, and only for specific diseases.

Studies of Blood Oxygenation and Ozonation

Most of the published research on the blood-ozone circuit comes from one group in Siena, Italy, which designed it. A search of PubMed for this page found these studies:

Laboratory and animal development

• A 2007 laboratory test of a new gas-exchange cartridge made of ozone-resistant polypropylene hollow fibres. It was tested with a salt solution, not with patients; the authors described it as efficient and inexpensive (Bocci and colleagues, 2007).

Early human reports

• A 2000 preliminary report in people: one of the authors volunteered to test the system and, after six treatments, noted that two fatty lumps (lipomas) disappeared; the group then treated a patient with Madelung disease (a rare condition of fatty deposits) and several patients with hardened arteries. The authors called it clinically valid and without side-effects. This was an uncontrolled report (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2000).
• A 2005 review by the same group: more than 1,200 treatments in 82 patients, a standard cycle of 14 one-hour sessions over 7 weeks, and a 4- to 5-fold rise in a blood marker of fat oxidation after each session. It reported experience in severe peripheral artery disease, coronary disease, cholesterol embolism, high blood fats, Madelung disease and sudden deafness, and stated that clinical trials were still under way (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2005).

The one controlled trial found

• A 2005 randomised trial in 28 people with peripheral artery disease (narrowed leg arteries) compared the circuit with intravenous prostacyclin, a blood-vessel-widening drug. Skin ulcers and pain improved more in the ozone group, but there was no difference in blood flow to the legs in either group. No side effects were recorded in 210 treatments (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2005).

No randomised trial of extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation in people with cancer was found, and no trial in people with parasitic infection was found. The research base is small, comes mostly from the developers, and centres on circulation problems, not cancer.

Ozone and Cancer Research

Separate from the blood-filtering circuit, there is a body of research on ozone and cancer in general. A 2018 review by Spanish radiation oncologists summarised it this way (Clavo and colleagues, 2018):

• In cell culture, ozone can damage tumour cells and can make radiotherapy and chemotherapy work better.
• In animals, ozone has shown immune effects and has made radiotherapy more effective.
• Ozone changes how haemoglobin releases oxygen and can alter blood flow and low-oxygen areas in tumours.
• Only a few clinical studies exist, and the authors concluded that randomised clinical trials are required before ozone can be shown to be useful alongside cancer treatment.

An example of the animal work: in mice carrying human oesophageal cancer, ozone alone or combined with radiation reduced tumour size and weight compared with no treatment, and the combination lowered several inflammation markers more than radiation alone (Guo and colleagues, 2024). This is a mouse study and says nothing directly about people.

In people, the studies found were small and aimed at side effects, not at the cancer. A 2023 Italian case series treated 6 women with breast cancer who had muscle and joint pain and fatigue from aromatase-inhibitor hormone therapy with oxygen–ozone autohaemotherapy; pain scores fell from about 9.4 to 2.4 out of 10 (Tirelli and colleagues, 2023). With 6 patients and no comparison group, the series cannot separate the treatment’s effect from expectation or natural change.

None of these studies used the full blood-filtering circuit, none measured survival or tumour response in people, and none tested ozone against parasites in cancer patients.

Reported Harms of Ozone Therapy

Serious harms from ozone therapy are reported mainly as individual case reports, so how often they happen is not known. A 2026 scoping review of oxygen–ozone autohaemotherapy (Casale and colleagues, 2026) found:

• Breakdown of red blood cells (haemolysis) and kidney failure, linked to ozone concentrations above 60 micrograms per millilitre.
• High blood potassium in people with complex illness (high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic kidney disease).
• Heart attack and other events from blocked blood supply.
• Gas bubbles reaching the brain (cerebral gas embolism) in people with a patent foramen ovale — a small opening between the heart’s upper chambers.
• Allergic reactions to equipment materials, and infections when hygiene rules were broken.

The review found that the overall rate of serious events cannot be reliably measured, because there are no prospective registries. Among the safety measures it listed was screening for glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, an inherited enzyme shortage that makes red blood cells fragile under oxidative stress.

Case reports

• Death from gas embolism during oxygen–ozone autohaemotransfusion given for psoriasis (Marchetti and La Monaca, 2000).
• Strokes after intravenous ozone: a previously healthy 36-year-old woman in Australia had chest pain, fainting and a seizure shortly after intravenous ozone therapy; scans showed multiple strokes in the thalamus and cerebellum, and she was left with lasting memory and thinking problems (Wong and colleagues, 2025).
• Temporary blindness: a 64-year-old woman in Texas developed leg weakness and loss of vision in both eyes after a session of intravenous ozone therapy, consistent with gas bubbles in the arteries; she recovered fully after treatment in a hyperbaric (high-pressure) oxygen chamber (Singh and Nevarez, 2026).
• Hepatitis C passed between patients: in an outpatient ozone service in Rome in 2001, 6 of 31 patients tested (19.4%) had hepatitis C virus infection, against an estimated 0.9% in the local population; all had received ozone-enriched transfusions of their own blood (Faustini and colleagues, 2005).

These reports involve autohaemotherapy and direct intravenous ozone rather than the filtering circuit. No published series reporting harms specifically from the full circuit was found; its developers reported none in their own studies, but published safety data on it come almost entirely from that group.

The United States Rule on Ozone

In the United States, ozone is addressed in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, section 801.415, “Maximum acceptable level of ozone”, issued by the Food and Drug Administration (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA). Its opening paragraph reads:

“Ozone is a toxic gas with no known useful medical application in specific, adjunctive, or preventive therapy. In order for ozone to be effective as a germicide, it must be present in a concentration far greater than that which can be safely tolerated by man and animals.”

The section goes on to describe effects on the central nervous system, heart and vision, irritation of the lungs that can lead to fluid on the lungs (pulmonary oedema), and the fact that the smell of ozone is not a reliable warning. It states that any device that generates ozone is considered adulterated or misbranded if it is used or intended for use “in any medical condition for which there is no proof of safety and effectiveness”, among other conditions. The section was last amended in December 2016, according to the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations.

The rule is written mainly about ozone-generating devices and the air people breathe; it does not mention blood treatment by name. It is, however, the Food and Drug Administration’s standing statement on the medical use of ozone.

Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation

A 2017 review by a Harvard photomedicine researcher, titled with the phrase “The Cure That Time Forgot”, describes the history (Hamblin, 2017):

• Ultraviolet blood irradiation was widely used in the 1940s and 1950s in the United States for blood infection, pneumonia, tuberculosis, arthritis, asthma and even polio, reported in the American Journal of Surgery.
• Its use fell away once antibiotics arrived. Later studies were mostly done in Russia and other Eastern countries, and the review describes the modern Western view as “highly controversial”.
• The review notes that only 5–7% of the blood volume was treated to get the best effect in the old studies, so any benefit in blood infection cannot come simply from killing germs in the bloodstream. Proposed effects include more active white cells that swallow germs, damped lymphocytes, and oxidised blood fats — mechanisms the review says may overlap with ozone therapy.
• The author argued for more research, especially for antibiotic-resistant infections.

A modern trial

One modern study in the United States was run under a Food and Drug Administration investigational-device exemption (permission to test, not an approval). Nine patients with chronic hepatitis C received 15 ultraviolet blood irradiation treatments over 22 weeks. Average virus levels fell by 21.5% by the end of the study and by 44.9% at the lowest point; three patients had a fall of more than half a log (roughly a threefold fall) (Kuenstner and colleagues, 2015). For comparison, the trial’s own authors note that newer antiviral drugs clear the virus for good in about 94% of people. This search found no approval of ultraviolet blood irradiation by the Food and Drug Administration for any condition.

No clinical study was found testing ultraviolet blood irradiation, with or without ultraviolet A light, against parasites in people, or as a cancer treatment.

Extracorporeal Photopheresis: The Approved Light-on-Blood Treatment

The light-on-blood treatment with United States approval as a patient therapy, and decades of hospital use, is extracorporeal photopheresis. It works differently from ultraviolet blood irradiation:

• White blood cells are separated from the rest of the blood by a machine.
• A drug called methoxsalen, a psoralen that becomes active only in light, is added to those cells.
• The cells are exposed to ultraviolet A light, which makes the drug bind to the cells’ genetic material, and are then returned to the patient.

It was first reported in 1987: of 37 people with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (a cancer of white blood cells that shows up in the skin) that had resisted other treatment, 27 responded, with an average 64% fall in skin involvement after about 22 weeks. Ultraviolet A combined with methoxsalen killed 88% of the targeted lymphocytes, while the drug alone did nothing (Edelson and colleagues, 1987).

The current United States label for methoxsalen sterile solution, used with a photopheresis system, gives one indication: the palliative treatment of the skin manifestations of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma that is unresponsive to other forms of treatment. The same label states that graft-versus-host disease is “a disease for which” the drug “is not approved”, and lists blood clots (pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis) reported in that use.

Graft-versus-host disease — when donor immune cells from a bone-marrow or stem-cell transplant attack the patient’s body — is nonetheless where photopheresis is most used today. A 2020 review describes it as a well-established second-line treatment for chronic graft-versus-host disease, with a less clear role in the acute form, and calls for more randomised trials (Drexler and colleagues, 2020).

The key difference

The 2017 review of ultraviolet blood irradiation notes that ultraviolet blood irradiation tends to stimulate it, while photopheresis tends to suppress it (Hamblin, 2017). Photopheresis needs the light-activated drug; ultraviolet A light without the drug did not kill the target cells in the 1987 study. And photopheresis is used for specific diseases — a lymphoma of the skin and graft-versus-host disease — not as a general antimicrobial or detoxification treatment.

Heavy Metals and Microplastics

Heavy metals

No published study was found reporting the presentation’s figures of 70% mercury and 47% cadmium removal by the blood-ozone circuit, and no source was found for the statement that 99.9% of people carry heavy metals. The only published report on the circuit and metals found for this page is a single case: an 88-year-old woman with chronic anaemia had two series of three treatments, and her urine levels of heavy metals (measured against creatinine) fell by an average of 25.7%; nickel did not fall. There was no control for ongoing exposure, and the report measured urine, not metal removed from the blood (Bennett and colleagues, 2025). The sibling page Parasites and Heavy Metals covers how metals are measured in people and what the cancer agencies say about them.

Microplastics

Plastic particles are in human blood. A 2022 study in 22 healthy volunteers found four common plastics, with an average of 1.6 micrograms per millilitre (Leslie and colleagues, 2022). Whether that harms health is still being studied.

The only removal studies found used a different procedure, therapeutic plasma exchange, in which the liquid part of the blood is removed and replaced. In 114 patients and 174 procedures, circulating microplastic levels fell after plasma exchange — but at low starting levels the fall was hidden because plastic leached back into the blood from the machine’s own plastic tubing (Weinstein and colleagues, 2026).

No study was found measuring microplastics before and after extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation. The circuit itself is built from plastics — the cartridge tested by its developers is made of polypropylene hollow fibres in a plastic housing (Bocci and colleagues, 2007) — and whether it removes or adds particles has not been reported.

One Hour, Two to Three Litres, and How Often

• Volume and time. The developers’ review reported up to 4,800 millilitres of blood treated in a one-hour session (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2005), so a one-hour session processing two to three litres is in the range they describe. Whether that is the patient’s “total blood volume” depends on body size; the presentation gave both descriptions.
• How often. The only published schedule found is the developers’: 14 one-hour sessions over 7 weeks, used mainly for artery disease (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2005). The presentation’s schedules — three to five sessions over three weeks, five to seven weekly sessions, or one a month — do not match a published protocol, and no study was found comparing schedules for any condition, cancer included.

How the Claim Compares With the Research

Supported

• The treatment exists as described: a one-hour circuit can pass several litres of blood through an oxygen–ozone exchanger (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2005).
• Ultraviolet light kills microbes, and ultraviolet blood irradiation has a real history of use in the 1940s and 1950s (Hamblin, 2017).
• Microplastics are present in human blood (Leslie and colleagues, 2022).

Supported only in part

• Improved circulation: one small randomised trial found better healing of leg ulcers than prostacyclin, but no change in measured blood flow (Di Paolo and colleagues, 2005).
• “Blood detoxification” of heavy metals: one uncontrolled case report found a 25.7% average fall in urine metal levels, far from the presentation’s figures (Bennett and colleagues, 2025).
• Immune effects: reviews describe immune changes in the laboratory and in animals (Clavo and colleagues, 2018; Hamblin, 2017), not proven benefit in people with cancer.

Contradicted

• The overall picture of a gentle, well-established therapy: the Food and Drug Administration’s standing rule calls ozone a toxic gas with no known useful medical application, and published case reports describe deaths, strokes and infections linked to ozone therapies (Marchetti and La Monaca, 2000; Wong and colleagues, 2025; Faustini and colleagues, 2005).
• Ultraviolet A as an antimicrobial on its own: in the approved light-on-blood treatment, ultraviolet A without the light-activated drug did not kill the target cells (Edelson and colleagues, 1987).

No research found

• Any trial of the blood-ozone circuit, or ultraviolet blood irradiation, in people with cancer.
• Any study showing the treatment kills parasites in people.
• The 70% mercury and 47% cadmium removal figures, and the 99.9% heavy-metal figure.
• Removal of microplastics by the circuit.
• Any study supporting the treatment schedules given.

What Is Not Known

• How often serious harm occurs with any form of ozone therapy — there are no registries with reliable numbers (Casale and colleagues, 2026).
• Whether the full blood-ozone circuit is safer than direct intravenous ozone or bag autohaemotherapy; independent safety data are lacking.
• Whether the oxidative stress the treatment creates on purpose interacts with chemotherapy or radiotherapy in people — laboratory and animal results point in different directions, and no human trial has tested it.
• Whether lowering microplastic levels in the blood, by any method, changes health.
• Whether ultraviolet blood irradiation has any effect beyond what was seen in small, older and mostly uncontrolled studies.

Decisions about cancer treatment belong with a clinician.

Connections

• Cancer and Parasites
• Parasites and Heavy Metals
• Rife Frequency Devices
• Detox During Chemotherapy: What the Research Shows
• Methylene Blue: Parasites, Cancer and Safety
• Mycosis Fungoides
• Lymphoma
• Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma
• Hyperbaric Oxygen
• Heavy Metals
• Heavy Metals Panel
• Microplastics
• Ultraviolet Radiation
• Niels Finsen
• Methylene Blue: Photodynamic Therapy and Cancer Research

Key Research Papers

1. Di Paolo N, Gaggiotti E, Galli F. Extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation: clinical and biological implications of ozone therapy. Redox Report. 2005;10(3):121-30. PubMed PMID: 16156950
2. Di Paolo N, Bocci V, Salvo DP, Palasciano G, Biagioli M, Meini S, et al. Extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation (EBOO): a controlled trial in patients with peripheral artery disease. The International Journal of Artificial Organs. 2005;28(10):1039-50. PubMed PMID: 16288443
3. Di Paolo N, Bocci V, Garosi G, Borrelli E, Bravi A, Bruci A, et al. Extracorporeal blood oxygenation and ozonation (EBOO) in man. Preliminary report. The International Journal of Artificial Organs. 2000;23(2):131-41. PubMed PMID: 10741810
4. Bocci V, Zanardi I, Travagli V, Di Paolo N. Oxygenation-ozonation of blood during extracorporeal circulation: in vitro efficiency of a new gas exchange device. Artificial Organs. 2007;31(9):743-8. PubMed PMID: 17725702
5. Clavo B, Santana-Rodríguez N, Llontop P, Gutiérrez D, Suárez G, López L, et al. Ozone Therapy as Adjuvant for Cancer Treatment: Is Further Research Warranted? Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 2018;2018:7931849. PubMed PMID: 30271455
6. Guo J, Guo J, Cheng B, Gong M, Sun X, Zhang H, et al. Ozone enhances the efficacy of radiation therapy in esophageal cancer. Journal of Radiation Research. 2024;65(4):467-473. PubMed PMID: 38842109
7. Tirelli U, Valdenassi L, Franzini M, Pandolfi S, Fisichella R, Chirumbolo S. Oxygen-ozone autohemotherapy in breast cancer patients suffering from fatigue and musculoskeletal pain upon aromatase inhibitors treatment: a case-series study. European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences. 2023;27(23):11643-11652. PubMed PMID: 38095411
8. Casale R, Petrikonis K, Ahmadian A, Bazzichi L, Sarzi-Puttini P. Oxygen-ozone autohaemotherapy in fibromyalgia: safety profile and adverse events. A scoping review. Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology. 2026;44(6):1199-1207. PubMed PMID: 42328943
9. Marchetti D, La Monaca G. An unexpected death during oxygen-ozone therapy. The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. 2000;21(2):144-7. PubMed PMID: 10871129
10. Wong CYY, Saxena K, Meneer J, George K, Keijzers G. Neurological Crisis Following Intravenous Ozone Therapy; a Case Report. Archives of Academic Emergency Medicine. 2025;13(1):e31. PubMed PMID: 40027218
11. Singh S, Nevarez J. Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment for Arterial Gas Embolism With Transient Cortical Blindness Following Intravenous Ozone Therapy: A Case Report. Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine. 2026;53(2):243-246. PubMed PMID: 42365944
12. Faustini A, Capobianchi MR, Martinelli M, Abbate I, Cappiello G, Perucci CA. A cluster of hepatitis C virus infections associated with ozone-enriched transfusion of autologous blood in Rome, Italy. Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. 2005;26(9):762-7. PubMed PMID: 16209382
13. Hamblin MR. Ultraviolet Irradiation of Blood: "The Cure That Time Forgot"? Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. 2017;996:295-309. PubMed PMID: 29124710
14. Kuenstner JT, Mukherjee S, Weg S, Landry T, Petrie T. The treatment of infectious disease with a medical device: results of a clinical trial of ultraviolet blood irradiation (UVBI) in patients with hepatitis C infection. International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2015;37:58-63. PubMed PMID: 26092299
15. Edelson R, Berger C, Gasparro F, Jegasothy B, Heald P, Wintroub B, et al. Treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma by extracorporeal photochemotherapy. Preliminary results. The New England Journal of Medicine. 1987;316(6):297-303. PubMed PMID: 3543674
16. Drexler B, Buser A, Infanti L, Stehle G, Halter J, Holbro A. Extracorporeal Photopheresis in Graft-versus-Host Disease. Transfusion Medicine and Hemotherapy. 2020;47(3):214-225. PubMed PMID: 32595426
17. Bennett SJ, Kuo J, Wang S, Salway RJ. Observed Reduction in Urinary Toxin Excretion With Extracorporeal Blood Oxygenation and Ozonation (EBOO) Treatment in an 88-Year-Old With Chronic Anemia: A Case Report. Cureus. 2025;17(12):e99948. PubMed PMID: 41583215
18. Leslie HA, van Velzen MJM, Brandsma SH, Vethaak AD, Garcia-Vallejo JJ, Lamoree MH. Discovery and quantification of plastic particle pollution in human blood. Environment International. 2022;163:107199. PubMed PMID: 35367073
19. Weinstein R, Yuksel ZS, Anderson C, Grant D, Milius P, Waldron K, et al. Can Plasma Exchange Be Used to Lower the Circulating Burden of Microplastics in Human Patients? Journal of Clinical Apheresis. 2026;41(3):e70135. PubMed PMID: 42169439

PubMed Topic Searches

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=extracorporeal+blood+oxygenation+and+ozonation
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=ozone+therapy+gas+embolism
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=ultraviolet+blood+irradiation
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=extracorporeal+photopheresis+cutaneous+T-cell+lymphoma

Other Sources

1. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Title 21, section 801.415: Maximum acceptable level of ozone. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-H/part-801/subpart-H/section-801.415
2. National Library of Medicine, DailyMed. United States prescribing label for methoxsalen sterile solution for extracorporeal photopheresis. https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?setid=5ad333bd-845f-43f8-9ecf-43491f26c7c7

Featured Videos