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Hemolysis as a consequence of open heart surgery is well investigated and explained by the oxidative and/or mechanical stress produced, e.g. by the heart lung machine. In Europe O3 is widely used by physicians, dedicated to alternative medicine. They apply O3 mostly by means of the Major Autohematotherapy (MAH, a process of removing 50-100 ml of blood, adding O3 gas to it and returning it to the patient's body). No controlled studies on the efficacy of O3 are available so far, but several anecdotal cases appear to confirm that MAH improves microcirculation, possibly due to increased RBC flexibility. Most methods established to estimate RBC deformability are hard to standardize and include high error of measurement. For our present investigation we used the method of laser diffraction in combination with image analysis. The variation coefficient of the measurement is less than 1%. Previous investigations of our group have shown, that mechanical stress decreases deformability, already at rather low levels of mechanical stress which do not include hemolysis. On the other hand exposure to O2, H2O2 or O3 does not alter the deformability of RBC and--except O3--does not induce considerably hemolysis. However this only holds true if deformability (shear rates 36/s - 2620/s) is determined in isotonic solutions. In hypertonic solutions O3 decreases RBC deformability, but improves it in hypotonic solutions. The results indicate that peroxidative stress dehydrates RBC and reduces their size. To explain the positive effect of O3 on the mechanical fragility of RBC we tentatively assume, that the reduction of RBC size facilitates the feed through small pore filters. In consequence, the size reduction in combination with undisturbed deformability at iso-osmolarity may have a beneficial effect on microcirculation.
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