We have been seeing that frail, elderly patients, as they show improvements in range of motion, also make great strides psychologically and in terms of the difficult-to-achieve stability in sleep rhythms.
The use of oxygen/ozone therapy is now an established practice in the field of orthopedics for its ability to promote rehabilitation in a patient’s motor skills. That this same therapy would also have a positive impact on the mind has been a surprising discovery, one made by the physicians and researchers at Brescia’s Fatebenefratelli research hospital in Via Pilastroni. In recent decades, this facility has dedicated significant resources to studying dementia and other complex disorders such as Alzheimer’s. “In our clinical practice, we have seen that ‘frail’, elderly patients, in addition to improving in terms of their motor skills, have also made great strides psychologically and in terms of the difficult-to-achieve stability in sleep rhythms,” says Cristian Bonvicini, one of the researchers. “This will be our starting point.”
A project focused on an integrated approach to identifying biological and neuropsychological markers of cognitive frailty and its treatment with oxygen/ozone therapy is about to get under way under the guidance of the geriatrician Cristina Geroldi, researchers Cristian Bonvicini and Catia Scassellati, and Dr. Antonio Galoforo, a pioneer in ozone therapy working both in Italy and in Africa. Financed by Italy’s Ministry of Health, the project is valued at €386,000 and half of this cost will be going to grants to finance the activities of the young researchers involved in the project, with the remainder going to the purchase of the lab equipment needed for the experiments.
The focus will be on understanding how ozone acts on a neuronal level, and the preliminary studies conducted by the researchers at Brescia’s Fatebenefratelli have already offered some initial results. The team has seen that, in the neuronal cells treated with oxygen and ozone, specific cellular functions involved in mental processes are activated, resulting in improved cognitive function and direct benefits for patients with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. For years now, Fatebenefratelli, under the direction of Brother Marco Fabello, has been treating these diseases and, above all, conducting some impressive research that has led to a great many results of scientific value, ranging from the scale for assessing cognition and behavioral disorders, which has been validated by the hospital’s researchers, and the VADO protocol for the structured global assessment of psychiatric patients to reality orientation therapy (ROT) for Alzheimer’s patients and studies of beta amyloid, a key protein.
Also of note is the Brescia institute’s “biobank”, a database of more than 18,000 biological samples of patients with neuropsychiatric disorders.
With this new study, which seeks to understand how ozone acts on neurons, a range of functions within the hospital will be engaged in a partnership with Pisa’s Scuola Normale. In addition to looking for “biological and neuropsychological markers, another objective will be to identify therapeutic targets. “Our reward?” asks Bonvicini. “Discovery, understanding, knowledge. And seeing that people suffer less.”
by Matteo Trebeschi
