Metabolomics Application in Hyperbaric Oxygen

Dear Colleagues,

Breathing oxygen that has a pressure higher than 21 kPa can be useful as a treatment. Normally, oxygen is provided with a PO₂ of 200–250 kPa, which is called Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy or HBOT. Today, approved indications for HBOT, like nonhealing wounds or radiation injury, can be found in the Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Indications from the UHMS. Besides the use of hyperoxia as a medicine, it is also used in (professional) diving. Indeed, Special Forces divers use 100% oxygen as a breathing gas in their closed-circuit rebreathers.

However, like any medication or treatment, HBOT also has side effects. The most common side effects are tiredness, oxygen myopia, and the risk of pulmonary and/or CNS oxygen toxicity. There are also indications that hyperoxia might lead to DNA damage. These side effects can also develop in divers breathing oxygen after long or successive days of diving. This is also true for patients who undergo oxygen breathing for a long time or receive HBOT for weeks.

To encompass both the treatment use of hyperbaric oxygen and its use as a diving gas, we introduce the term “Hyperbaric Oxygen Medicine”. Hyperbaric Oxygen Medicine intends to cover:

• Treatments using hyperbaric oxygen as the main or adjuvant therapy.
• Diving with oxygen-enriched diving gases, including 100% oxygen.
• Acute side effects of hyperbaric oxygen such as CNS oxygen toxicity, etc.
• Acute as well as chronic side effects of hyperbaric oxygen, such as pulmonary oxygen toxicity, DNA damage, etc.
• Optimization of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in approved indications.
• Research focusing on using Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy in diseases that are not yet approved indications.
• Research gaining insight into the development of side effects and how to mitigate them.

This Special Issue of Metabolites is dedicated to the whole spectrum of Hyperbaric Oxygen Medicine, with special attention being paid to research using metabolomics including, but not restricted to, exhaled volatile organic compounds and body fluid composites. We hope to provide leading experts with a platform to share their research and thoughts in order to contribute to the direction of future research in Hyperbaric Oxygen Medicine.

Dr. Pieter Jan Van Ooij
Dr. Andreas Koch
Guest Editors

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• hyperoxia
• Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
• diving medicine
• oxygen toxicity
• metabolites
• metabolomics
• exhaled breath analysis
• body fluid analysis
• volatile organic compounds
• nonvolatile organic compounds
• GC-MS
• LC-MS
• laser microprobe mass spectrometry