A smallscale study hopes to shed light on how light therapy might affect the pineal gland in the brain and so reverse sexual disorders.

Male subjects (aged 39–60) were recruited at the Urology Department of the University of Siena Medical Center if they had hypoactive sexual desire disorder, sexual arousal disorder, or orgasmic disorder, but were not on drugs that cause such problems and didn’t have mood disorders.

Subjects were randomly assigned to active light treatment (ALT) or placebo light treatment (L-PBO) and assessed at baseline and after two weeks.

The ALT was daily exposure to a white fluorescent light box fitted with an ultraviolet filter and rated at 10,000 lx at a distance of 1 m from screen to cornea) for 30 min as soon as possible after waking between 7.00 and 8.00 a.m. The L-PBO was an identical light box fitted with a neutral density gel filter to reduce light exposure to 100 lx.

After the two weeks of treatment, 3 of the 5 patients randomized to ALT no longer had the sexual disorder they had presented originally whereas the sexual disorder was still present in all the 4 patients in the placebo group.

ALT might provide a way of treating sexual disorders although a much larger scale trial is now needed to verify the findings from this preliminary screening.

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