Medical application for LEDs

Timex writes "Doctors at the Medical College of Wisconsin are finding that near-infrared light from LEDs originally designed for commercial plant growth research in space are useful in healing hard-to-heal wounds. more information is available from their press section"

Comments

IR effects on cells?

[kstantfw]

In response to the previous poster, I don't know of any evidence for IR causing mutations. In general, light must be high enough energy (i.e. short enough wavelength) to cause chemical changes in DNA to cause mutations. UV light causes mutations by photo-induced dimerization of thymine. X-rays cause mutations by producing breaks in DNA strands. I can't think of a mechanism by which IR could cause a mutagenic effect.

In fact, I'm sceptical that the reported effect is real, as it's hard to see what effect IR light would have on cells, unless there's a particular receptor for it, or it works by some non-specific mechanism, such as heating the cells. And I actually am a biophysicist :)

Re:Not entirely unrelated

[IANAL - thank god]

UV treatment is based on the physical fact that bilirubin (which is exessively present in neonatal jaundice due to immature liver degradation systems) is transformed into excretable fractions by UV light stimulation. This is pretty far from some vague pseudoscience crap like "the LEDs boost energy to the cells". Not that I consider it to be impossible, but those people will have to be a little bit more convincing than just saying "and he can cure cancer with his LEDs too!" (with a photosensitive drug - duh) And yes, IAAD

Hmmm...

[Mister Transistor]

IANAD... (Doctor, Dork, whatever...) but I have heard of using HeNe Lasers (red, 632 Nm) for healing skin wounds and removal of various localized uglinesses of the skin. If there's any validity to that method, then IR Lasers might also provide some benefit. As for mutations, sorry. Light is considered a non-ionizing radiation, and as such, doesn't cause the DNA to get resequenced (mutated). Frequencies at or above "ionizing radiation" (X-rays, Gamma rays, etc.) do this to human tissue. Frequencies below just cause tissue to heat up (and possibly causes cell rupture) as it absorbs the energy.

Re:Not entirely unrelated

[Siqnal 11]

...vague pseudoscience crap...

Did you read the article from the Medical College of Wisconsin?

IANAD, but I seem to recall something called the Scientific Method, which is the accepted way by which scientists, collectively and over time, construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of our existence. The researchers are in the middle of that process now, so you should probably hold off on your judgements until they're finished. Then, maybe you'll have something 'a little bit more convincing'.

Then again, maybe not.

--

Not new news... been studied for years

[Pentapod]

This isn't a newsflash, scientists have been studying the effects of various kinds of radiation on tissue healing for years now. Studies have focused mainly on lasers and LEDs.

"stimulating effects (from therapeutic light) are reported following irradiation with non-laser sources ... this view is not difficult to accept when it is remembered that wave-length dependent photobiochemical reactions occur throughout nature and are involved in such things as vision, photosynthesis, tanning and Vitamin D metabolism. In this view, laser therapy is really a form of light therapy, and lasers are important in that they are convenient sources of intense light at wavelengths that stimulate specific physiological functions" (Lasers in Surgery and Medicine 9:1-5, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, 1989).

LED's and LASERS are no more than convenient devices for producing electromagnetic radiation at specific wavelengths. The reason for the stimulation of human tissue is not 100% understood yet but various hypotheses and claims have been made both by scientists and less reliable holistic-healer types.

The most reasonable seems to me to be that the release of energy from cellular storage requires the input of energy. All food turns into ATP (adenosine triphosphate) before it is utilized by the cells. ATP provides the chemical energy that drives the chemical reaction of the cell, but (if I recall my Cellular Metabolism class correctly) it requires a small energy input to release the potential energy stored in the ATP. If the addition of mild radiation to the tissue can be used to stimulate the release of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) then the increases in ATP would allow cells to accept nutrients faster and get rid of waste products faster by increasing the energy level in the cell.

An alternative hypothesis is that the mild IR radiation could be interpreted by the cell as a potential danger, triggering the cell's defense mechanisms to kick into high-gear and speeding up defense and healing processes. However, considering how many beneficial roles radiation plays in our cellular processes (like vitamin D synthesis) I prefer the first hypothesis. (And hell, when you walk around in the sunshine, don't you just feel *good*? Skin tingling, blood flowing, you just feel more alive and healthy don't you?)

Pentapod

very cool

[arete]

this is quite impressive - I'm not terribly surprised about the _general_ vein of this - but they're talking about 50% of the healing time - that's very impressive.