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Mariana Figueiro, PhD, professor and director of the Light and Health Research Center, department of population health medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, said light is the “major stimulus for the circadian system, and a robust light-dark pattern daily (which can be given by light therapy during the day) improves sleep and behavior and reduces depression and agitation.”
Dr. Figueiro, who was not involved with the current study, noted that patients with dementia “have sleep issues, which can further affect their cognition; improvement in sleep leads to improvement in cognition,” and this may be an underlying mechanism associated with these results.
The clinical significance of the study “is that this is a nonpharmacological intervention and can be easily applied in the homes or controlled facilities, and it can be used with any other medication,” she pointed out.
“More importantly, sleep medications have negative side effects, so the use of nonpharmacological interventions improving sleep and cognition is great for clinical practice,” she added.
However, she took issue with the finding that phototherapy was not effective for depression and agitation, noting that there were “too few studies to say for sure that light therapy is ineffective at improving these outcomes.”
The research received no external funding. The authors and Dr. Figueiro disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.