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Low-level laser therapy is a new subspecialty for the medical application of lasers that provides therapeutic rather than surgical outcomes for many medical indications. Recently, low-level laser therapy was reported to "liquefy" or release stored fat in adipocytes by the opening of specialized yet not identified cell membrane-associated pores after a brief treatment. Currently, low-level laser therapy is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved technology for improving pain alleviation. To explore these data further, a series of in vitro studies on human preadipocytes and institutional animal care and use committee-approved protocols in a porcine Yucatan model and an institutional review board-approved clinical study were performed. Using a 635-nm low-level laser of 1.0 J/cm supplied to the authors by the vendor, these studies were designed to determine whether alteration in adipocyte structure or function was modulated after low-level laser therapy.
