An investigation into the efficacy of intra-articular ozone (O<sub>2</sub>&ndash;O<sub>3</sub>)&nbsp;injection in patients with knee osteoarthritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose: This study aimed to review and pool the current literature on intra-articular ozone injection in knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients. Methods: A systematic review of three big databases was performed to identify all English-language randomized clinical trials (RCTs) that evaluated the efficacy of intra-articular ozone injection vs a control injection for knee OA sufferers, using the following two measuring tools: pain VAS and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC). Results: A total of 428 patients in five RCTs were included, from which 53% (n=225) were in the ozone group and 47% in the control (hyaluronic acid [HA], dextrose, and air injection) group (n=203). The mean age of the patients in both groups was 64 years. Females were the majority. All studies had at least 2 months of follow-up (F/U). Mean difference (MD) between the groups for VAS in the first month was –0.23 with a P -value of 0.71 (negative value was in favor of ozone), whereas this difference in the third and sixth months reached 1.04 and 1.31, respectively, favoring the control group. These data demonstrated that control injection had a more prolonged pain relief period. A similar trend was seen regarding WOMAC scores; pooled results showed that ozone was slightly better than the control injections during the first month (MD =–7.84 [ P =0.15]), but it declined to MD=2.55 and 8.23 at 2- to 3- and 4- to 6-month F/U, respectively, again in favor of control injections. Also, adverse events occurred homogeneously in both ozone (6/150 cases, 4%) and control groups (7/129 cases, 5.4%; P -value=0.31). Conclusion: Based on the current meta-analysis, intra-articular ozone injection efficacy was significantly superior to placebo and slightly lower to other control injections with non-significant difference. Therefore, ozone could be recommended as an efficient non-surgical treatment, durable for at least 3–6 months, in mild or moderate knee OA management. Keywords: ozone, hyaluronic acid, knee osteoarthritis, systematic review, meta-analysis
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.020 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.014 | 0.020 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".