Red Light Therapy for the Eyes
Red light therapy for ageing eyes, also called photobiomodulation, comes in two very different forms. Home panels at 670 nm rest on a plausible mechanism and a few tiny pilots; a clinic treatment for dry macular degeneration now has two sham-controlled trials and a US marketing authorisation, though both trials have industry ties.
If you have intermediate dry macular degeneration, ask a retina specialist about clinic-delivered photobiomodulation. Don't buy a home red-light panel for your eyes: it is plausible and low-risk, but unproven.
The idea: an energy problem in the retina
The retina loses roughly 70% of its cellular energy output (ATP) over a lifetime.[1] Deep-red light at 670 nm penetrates tissue and is absorbed by an enzyme (cytochrome c oxidase) in mitochondria, the cell's power plants. In aged mice, a month of daily exposure improved retinal function on an electrical test (the electroretinogram) by about 25%, without restoring it to young levels.[2] A proposed second step, that long wavelengths make the water around the cell's energy-making pumps less viscous, is the trial authors' own hypothesis rather than a demonstrated finding.
Home 670 nm light: tiny pilots
In 20 adults aged 38–70, a single three-minute exposure to 670 nm light improved colour-contrast vision by about 17% on the blue-yellow axis and 12% on the red-green axis. The ten participants retested a week later still showed a smaller gain. The sample was too small to break the result down by age, sex or colour axis.[3]
The morning-only claim is a hypothesis. Six of the twenty repeated the exposure months later in the early afternoon and showed no improvement at all, which the authors linked to energy production in fruit flies peaking in the morning. Six people, all also in the morning group and with no separate control group, is a hypothesis rather than a finding, and no other group has reproduced it.[4][5]
The longest study found nothing. A 12-month pilot with no control group treated 31 people with intermediate macular degeneration and 11 healthy older adults with daily 670 nm light at five times the strength used in that colour-contrast study. It found no change in drusen (the fatty deposits of macular degeneration), no thickening of the light-sensing cell layer and no functional gain in the macular-degeneration group. Its one significant result went the other way: night-vision thresholds improved by 1.77 decibels in the healthy group. With different endpoints, a five-fold dose, no sham arm and no randomisation, it neither confirms nor refutes the colour-contrast finding.[6]
Consumer panels also vary widely in output and spectral purity, and long-term outcomes are unknown.
Clinic treatment for dry macular degeneration
Clinic-delivered photobiomodulation is a different treatment: three wavelengths (590, 660 and 850 nm), given in a retina clinic in short courses repeated every four months.
- The main trial. In a double-masked, randomised, sham-controlled trial of 148 eyes in 100 people with dry macular degeneration, treated eyes met the visual-acuity target at 21 months with a gain of about six letters. By 24 months, 6.8% of treated eyes had progressed to geographic atrophy, the advanced dry stage, against 24.0% of sham-treated eyes.[7]
- A second trial. A 12-month multicentre sham-controlled trial by a different group, in 138 eyes with early or intermediate disease, found drusen shrinking on treatment while they grew on sham, with an advantage of just under four letters.[8]
- Approval. The US Food and Drug Administration granted the device de novo marketing authorisation in November 2024.
The limits: both trials have device-industry ties, neither has independent long-term replication, and a 2026 review of the wider field still finds it too varied in devices, wavelengths and dosing to call photobiomodulation established therapy for most eye conditions.[9]
What to do
- With intermediate dry macular degeneration, raise clinic photobiomodulation with a retina specialist, alongside the AREDS formula.
- With healthy eyes, skip the home panel and put the effort into not smoking and a dilated exam on schedule instead; see Vision.
Further reading
- Shinhmar H et al. Weeklong improved colour contrasts sensitivity after single 670 nm exposures associated with enhanced mitochondrial function. Scientific Reports 2021.[10]
- Grewal MK et al. A Pilot Study Evaluating the Effects of 670 nm Photobiomodulation in Healthy Ageing and Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Journal of Clinical Medicine 2020.[11]
- Sivapathasuntharam C et al. Aging retinal function is improved by near infrared light (670 nm) that is associated with corrected mitochondrial decline. Neurobiology of Aging 2017.[12]
- Jaffe GJ et al. Long-term efficacy and safety of photobiomodulation in dry age-related macular degeneration (LIGHTSITE III: 24-month analysis). Retina 2026.[13]
- Iovino C et al. 12-month outcomes of photobiomodulation in dry age-related macular degeneration: a prospective multicentre randomised double-masked controlled clinical trial. Br J Ophthalmol 2026.[14]
- Waisberg E et al. Near-Infrared and Red-Light Photobiomodulation for Ocular Aging and Diseases: A Narrative Review. Ophthalmol Ther 2026.[15]