Exercise performance / muscle recovery
Photobiomodulation for muscle performance and fatigue meta-analysis
Vanin AA, Verhagen E, Barboza SD, et al. Lasers in Medical Science. 2018.
A systematic review of healthy people found generally positive results for performance and fatigue outcomes but with substantial protocol variability.
Evidence grade
low
Effect direction
positive
Panel relevance
partially-replicable
Key findings
- The review included 39 trials with 861 participants.
- Twenty-eight trials were included in meta-analyses of outcomes including time to exhaustion, repetitions, peak torque, and lactate.
- The authors found effects favoring phototherapy but rated evidence from very low to moderate quality depending on outcome.
Protocol details
| Wavelengths | Not reported nm |
|---|---|
| Irradiance | Not reported mW/cm2 |
| Fluence | Not reported J/cm2 |
| Session time | Not reported minutes |
| Frequency | Usually acute pre-exercise or peri-exercise dosing in included trials |
| Duration | Varied by exercise protocol |
| Treatment area | Target muscles |
| Device type | Low-level laser, LED, or combined laser/LED devices |
Caveats
- Athletic protocols are timing-sensitive and muscle-specific.
- Panel users should not assume more dose is better; PBM often shows biphasic dose response.