1 1120 HSW University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143
2 Department of Chemistry, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557
The recent review by Cohen and Ostrow on new concepts in phototherapy1 contains a number of misleading statements.
1. McDonagh did not administer rose bengal to Gunn rats as suggested (p 740, column 2).
2. McDonagh has never proposed that "generation and addition of singlet oxygen [is] the major mechanism of phototherapy" (p 740, column 2). He has, however, frequently expressed the opposite view; namely, that photooxygenation of bilirubin is not the most important pathway in phototherapy (for example, see McDonagh2 and McDonagh and Palma3).