Research summary · Recovery and rehabilitation
Light therapy did not outperform sham for bone-stress injury recovery
Researchers randomized 103 military trainees with MRI-confirmed tibial or metatarsal bone-stress injuries to photobiomodulation or sham treatment, alongside standard care. Ninety-seven contributed to the final analysis, with pain, function and MRI healing assessed at four months.
- Publication year
- 2026
- First published online
- Publication type
- Randomized sham-controlled trial
- Journal
- Bone
- Population / context
- Military physical training · Tibial and metatarsal bone-stress injuries
What the publication reports
There was no statistically significant difference in time to graduation, on-time graduation, MRI healing, pain or function. The graduation-time hazard ratio for sham versus active treatment was 0.95 (95% CI 0.61–1.48), offering no evidence of accelerated recovery in this setting.
Limits and interpretation
Graduation is an occupational endpoint, not a sport-specific return-to-play measure. The sample, injury grades and treatment protocol limit generalization; nonsignificant results with broad confidence intervals do not prove exact equivalence.
Read the source
Consult the original record for the full author list, methods, references, funding and competing-interest disclosures.
Photobiomodulation therapy versus sham for tibial and metatarsal bone stress injuries in military trainees: A randomized controlled trial
Original publication / indexed recordPMID: 42880535DOI: 10.1016/j.bone.2026.118135Reader discussion
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