Oxygen: A Stimulus, Not "Only" a Drug.

Depending on the oxygen partial pressure in a tissue, the therapeutic effect of oxygenation can vary from simple substance substitution up to hyperbaric oxygenation when breathing hyperbaric oxygen at 2.5-3.0 ATA. Surprisingly, new data showed that it is not only the oxygen supply that matters as even a minimal increase in the partial pressure of oxygen is efficient in triggering cellular reactions by eliciting the production of hypoxia-inducible factors and heat-shock proteins. Moreover, it was shown that extreme environments could also interact with the genome; in fact, epigenetics appears to play a major role in extreme environments and exercise, especially when changes in oxygen partial pressure are involved. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is, essentially, "intermittent oxygen" exposure. We must investigate hyperbaric oxygen with a new paradigm of treating oxygen as a potent stimulus of the molecular network of reactions.