Studies on the biological effects of ozone: 4. Cytokine production and glutathione levels in human erythrocytes.

We have investigated the effect of various concentrations of ozone on human blood aiming to correlate the production of cytokines with depletion of reduced glutathione and hemolysis. As erythrocytes constitute the bulk of blood cells and represent the main target of ozone they have been taken as a useful marker of its oxidative activity. It appears that a transient exposure (30 sec) of blood of up to 78 micrograms ozone per ml of blood does not depress the production of cytokines even though there is a slight increase of hemolysis and a small decrease of intracellular reduced glutathione. In contrast either a constant (up to 30 sec) exposure to an ozone flux or a high ozone concentration (108 micrograms/ml) markedly decreases reduced glutathione levels and depresses cytokine production.