Blood Irradiation Therapy

Blood irradiation therapy is an alternative medical procedure in which the blood is exposed to low level light, often laser light, for therapeutic reasons. The practice was originally developed in the United States, but most recent research on it has been conducted in Germany, using ultraviolet lamps, and in Russia, across all variants; low level laser therapy has been tested for a wide range of conditions, though rigorous double blinded studies have not yet been performed, and it has been claimed that ultraviolet irradiation of blood kills bacteria through DNA damage and by activating the immune system. The therapy is highly controversial and has fallen from mainstream use since its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s. It can be administered in three ways: extracorporeally, by removing blood from the body and irradiating it in a special tube, the method used for ultraviolet blood irradiation by UV lamps; transcutaneously, by placing a device on the outside of the skin so radiation passes through it; or intravenously, by inserting a device into a large blood vessel, using monochromatic laser light. It is not related to the separate practice of gamma irradiation of blood in transfusion medicine.