Let there be light! Health Editor Barry Nelson looks at the remarkable work of two Durham doctors who could be sitting on a goldmine.

IT was when friends started telling her she 'looked like she'd had a good night's sleep' that Jane began wondering whether the revolutionary 'anti-wrinkle' device in her handbag was having an effect. Jane, a 42-year-old hospital nurse from County Durham, agreed to take part in an experiment involving a new form of therapy.

Dubbed 'Restorelite' by its inventors - a pair of County Durham doctors with a conviction that infrared light could stimulate the body's immune system - the palm-sized gadget needed to be held close to the target area of the skin around her eyes and activated for a few minutes every day.

Jane was told that if it worked she should begin to notice changes to lines and wrinkles around her eyes.

"I had been doing it for a couple of weeks when people started noticing a difference. To be honest, I didn't, at first, because it was so gradual," says Jane.

"People were saying 'you look well... you look like you have had a good night's sleep' and then someone asked me whether I had had Botox injections around the eyes," she says.

After using Restorelite twice a day for eight weeks, Jane finally admitted that she could see a real difference.

While Jane is not someone with heavy lines and wrinkles, she noticed that lines around her eyes had virtually disappeared, along with her crowsfeet in each corner.

Now Jane, who describes herself as someone who likes to work hard and play hard, is a convert.

"It definitely works and it is so easy to use. It's got a timer which bleeps after a minute so you can move it to another position. You split your eye into thirds, first the outer eye, then the middle then the inner eye."

Jane was one of the first to try Restorelite, which costs £199.

Since then the inventors have run a trial involved 79 volunteers.

Designed as a so-called 'double blind' clinical trial, which means that patients were initially not sure whether they are using the real thing or a dummy, before all being given the real thing, the results were analysed by an independent medical statistician.

Darlington eye surgeon Jim Haslam, one half of the team behind Restorelite, explained that the volunteers were asked to keep a diary and then complete a questionnaire at the end of the treatment.

"We asked them if they noticed a difference. The responses in the questionnaire were reviewed by a medical statistician who said there was a statistically significant majority of people who could recognise there has been an improvement," he says.

"Basically, most of those taking part said it had worked."

The inventors now plan to submit the details of the trial to a scientific journal.

The results don't really surprise Dr Haslam, who already has a lot of evidence to show that infrared light with a wavelenth of 1,072 nanometers has a rejuvenating effect on tissue.

Only last year, researchers at Sunderland University conducted a controlled experiment using the new technology which proved that this particular frequency of light had a measurable, positive effect on human immune cells, which are also known as lymphocytes.

The scientific brain behind the project is Dr Haslam's friend and business partner, South African-born Easington GP Dr Gordon Dougal.

Dr Dougal has a degree in electronic engineering and has long been fascinated by the potential to harness light to encourage healing.

He has spent the past decade working on the project in his own home laboratory but it was when he forged a business partnership with Dr Haslam that the project really took off. The first practical application of the new technology was a hand-held gadget called Virulite designed to stop cold sores from developing.

Dr Dougal, who has been testing the 1,072 nanometer light frequency on his own face for years, found that one of the side-effects was to rapidly clear up cold sores before they could take hold.

After working out a way of delivering light to the affected area - by means of a battery-driven light-emitting handset the size of a mobile phone - and convincing medical appliance authorities that the device was not harmful, the marketing of Virulite began in earnest a couple of years ago.

Since the launch in the UK and internationally, Virulite has gone from strength to strength. The product costs £45.

"We reckon we have now sold 18,000 Virulite units worldwide. The bulk were sold in the UK but we have also marketed them all over the world," says Dr Haslam.

The successful launch of Virulite was followed by the marketing of Restorelite, which also has been cleared for sale by the European authorities.

"So far we have sold about 3,000 Restorelites around the world, including quite a few in America, Italy and in the Middle East."

The two doctors are expecting a further boost to sales following the publication of results of the latest clinical trial into Virulite which involved 32 volunteers from the North-East.

Published in the journal of Clinical and Experimental Dermatology, the paper's author, Middlesbrough GP Dr George Hargate, found that treatment of cold sores with the Virulite CS device "is an effective means of treating herpes liabialis" which reduced cold sore healing time to 6.3 days compared with 9.4 days for those not given any treatment.

The time the cold sore took to form a crust was also reduced from two days for those treated with the device to 2.88 days to those not given any treatment.

Dr Hargate says: "The device reduces healing time by 33 per cent, which is better than the 10-12 per cent reduction achieved with topical aciclovir."

Aciclovir, an antiviral drug, is the active ingredient in most cold sore treatments.

Dr Haslam is upbeat about the result of the trial: "This shows that Virulite is unequivocally the best treatment in the world for cold sores."

Sarah, a 47-year-old hospital nurse from the North-East, agrees.

She was one of the guinea pigs in one of the first Virulite trials.

"The thing I really like about it is that it stops them in their tracks," says Sarah, who has been plagued by cold sores in the past.

"If you use creams they still go into blisters but with Virulite they don't blister any more. It stops them dead."

Sarah was also amazed that after what she describes as "two blasts" with Virulite she didn't get another cold sore for months.

Drs Dougal and Haslam have come a long way in a few years but they are excited at new potential applications for their pioneering technology.

"What is really exciting is that we have proven that this light wavelength does produce a photochemical change in cells," says Dr Haslam, who agrees that the sky is the limit for the Durham doctors.

* For more information about Virulite and Restorelite contact 0800 0523939 or visit the websites www.vcs.eu.com or www.restorelite.co.uk