Hydrogen Gas Shows Promise as New Medicine in Clinical Trials
- Authors
- Hennie Marie Johnsen, Marianne Hiorth, Jo Klaveness
- Journal
- Molecules
- Year
- 2023
- DOI
- 10.3390/molecules28237785
- Study Type
- clinical
- Peer Reviewed
- Yes
- Country
- Norway
- Health Condition
- Cardiovascular Disease
- Body System
- Cardiovascular
TL;DR
Scientists looked at how hydrogen gas might help treat diseases because it can fight harmful stuff in your body, and they found it showed promise for helping with heart disease, cancer, brain problems, and lots of other conditions. The main problem right now is figuring out how to safely get hydrogen gas into people's bodies since it's explosive and hard to work with, but if they can solve that, it could become a real medicine in the future.
Key Finding
Hydrogen gas therapy shows promising potential across multiple disease areas including cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurological conditions, though practical delivery methods remain a significant obstacle to clinical use.
Summary
This review examined 81 clinical trials and 64 scientific studies on hydrogen gas therapy to understand its potential medical uses. Researchers found promising results across many disease areas including heart disease, cancer, breathing problems, and brain disorders, though they noted that delivering hydrogen safely and effectively remains a major challenge due to its explosive nature and difficulty dissolving in water.
Practical Takeaway
While this review suggests hydrogen therapy warrants further investigation, it is important to note this is a summary of existing research rather than new evidence, and most studies have not yet proven hydrogen's effectiveness in humans. The authors themselves identify that major technical and safety challenges must be solved before hydrogen could become a standard medical treatment. Anyone interested in hydrogen water should await results from well-designed human clinical trials before drawing conclusions about health benefits.
Abstract
With its antioxidant properties, hydrogen gas (H2) has been evaluated in vitro, in animal studies and in human studies for a broad range of therapeutic indications. A simple search of "hydrogen gas" in various medical databases resulted in more than 2000 publications related to hydrogen gas as a potential new drug substance. A parallel search in clinical trial registers also generated many hits, reflecting the diversity in ongoing clinical trials involving hydrogen therapy. This review aims to assess and discuss the current findings about hydrogen therapy in the 81 identified clinical trials and 64 scientific publications on human studies. Positive indications have been found in major disease areas including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory diseases, central nervous system disorders, infections and many more. The available administration methods, which can pose challenges due to hydrogens' explosive hazards and low solubility, as well as possible future innovative technologies to mitigate these challenges, have been reviewed. Finally, an elaboration to discuss the findings is included with the aim of addressing the following questions: will hydrogen gas be a new drug substance in future clinical practice? If so, what might be the administration form and the clinical indications?