Efficacy of ozone therapy on acute muscle strain model of rat

Strain type injuries constitute about 90% of all sports injuries characterized by musle tissue damage. We aimed to investigate the efficiency of ozone on strain injury on rats and to compare with effects of diclofenac. A total of 72 male Spregue-Dawley rats, weighing 200-250 gram were used in our study. All subjects were clustered into four main groups, as follows: ozone group, strain group, strain+ ozone, strain+ diclofenac. In strain model, a load of 1, 5 times of subject’s body weight was suspended to one of the hind legs of the anesthesized rat to overstrech the tibialis anterior muscle. The procedure repeated twice for 20 minutes episodes. The subjects were then sacrificed to see the biochemical and histological changes at end of the 6th, 12th, 72nd hours. Our findings showed that strain caused marked increase of muscle enzymes and the increases were less prominent in the diclofenac and ozone groups. We didn’t notice enzyme and/or histological changes on muscle in the ozone group. Our data suggest that ozone have similar and sometimes even better therapeutic results to diclofenac on muscle tissue. We think that ozone might alleviate the extent of injury due to strain, like NSAID and could have a potential to be used in the clinical practice.