For the first time in biology, a team of researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), California is reporting that the human body makes ozone. Led by Professor Paul Wentworth, Jr, Ph.D., the team has been slowly gathering evidence over the last few years that the human body produces the reactive gas—most famous as the ultraviolet ray-absorbing component of the ozone layer—as part of a mechanism to protect it from bacteria and fungi.
This was a completely unexpected development, since for the last 100 years, immunologists believed that antibodies—proteins secreted into the blood by the immune system—acted only to recognize foreign pathogens and attract lethal "effector" immune cells to the site of infection. Two years ago, Lerner & Wentworth demonstrated that antibodies are capable top produce ozone and other chemical oxidants when they are fed with singlet oxygen (a reactive form of O2). Last year, Babior, Lerner & Wentworth evidenced that oxidants produced by antibodies can destroy bacteria by poking holes in their cell walls. Now, Babior & Wentworth found where the singlet oxygen comes from ~ it’s the Neutrophils, one of the effector immune cells which are little cellular factories that produce singlet oxygen and other oxidants. Their research work got recently published in one of the most prestigious science journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Ozone is a reactive form of oxygen that exists naturally as a trace gas in the atmosphere. It is perhaps best known for its crucial role absorbing ultraviolet radiation in the stratosphere, where it is concentrated in a so-called ozone layer, protecting life on earth from solar radiation. Ozone is also a familiar component of air in industrial and urban settings where the gas is a hazardous component of smog. However, ozone has never before been detected in biology.
Ozone is also reported to be a selective & rapid oxidizer of viruses (HIV, Herpes simplex and zoster, cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr, myxoviruses & retroviruses), bacteria (coliform & staphylococcus) and virally infected cell membranes. Healthy self cells may be spared because they have the built in protection of the oxidation buffers, tocopherol, ascorbic acid, superoxide dismutase (SOD), uric acid and glutathione peroxidase. It has been documented that cancer cells have little or no expression of oxidation buffer enzymes, catalase, SOD & peroxidase. Hence ozone is particularly damaging to cancerous cells.
The question still remained, however, as to how the antibodies were making the ozone. The TSRI team knew that in order to make the ozone and other highly reactive oxidants, the antibodies had to use a starting material known as singlet oxygen, a rare, excited form of oxygen. During an immune response, the neutrophils, where this singlet oxygen is generated, engulf and destroy bacteria and fungi by blasting them with these oxidants.
The work of the TSRI scientists suggests that the antibacterial effect of neutrophils is enhanced by antibodies. In addition to killing the bacteria themselves, the neutrophils feed singlet oxygen to the antibodies, which convert it into ozone, adding weapons to the assault.
The research paper brings out something that is really new, but there are still a million questions that follow. What does the ozone do to the body's proteins and nucleic acids? Can neutrophils make ozone without the antibodies? How long does ozone last in the body? And, most importantly, how will these discoveries help to cure disease? The research team continues to investigate.
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