Balneotherapy in medicine: A review

One of the most-cited reviews in the balneotherapy literature — 161 citations as of the time of cataloguing — published in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine. Nasermoaddeli and Kagamimori survey balneotherapy across the full range of medical applications, not as a specialist text for a single condition but as a map of what the field has studied and found.

What It Covers

The review spans three major medical domains: rheumatology (the largest body of balneotherapy research, covering osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and ankylosing spondylitis), dermatology (psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, chronic skin conditions), and rehabilitation (post-surgical recovery, chronic pain management, musculoskeletal rehabilitation). Within each domain it reports on available study types, outcomes, and evidence quality.

Mechanisms Discussed

The paper addresses three mechanism categories: thermal (heat effects on circulation, muscle tone, pain perception), chemical (biological activity of dissolved minerals and organic compounds including humic substances), and immunological (modulation of immune cell activity and cytokine production). This three-pathway framework is the standard model for explaining why balneotherapy adds benefit beyond plain hot water.

Why Citation Count Matters Here

161 citations means this paper is a reference point for dozens of subsequent balneotherapy studies. When researchers in this field write introductions or cite the overall evidence base, they frequently cite Nasermoaddeli 2005. For this site, it functions as a high-authority anchor for the general claim that balneotherapy has an established evidence base across rheumatology and dermatology — not as primary data but as a trusted synthesis of the field’s knowledge at the time of publication.