Details of these experiments demonstrate that both UV light and visible light exposures necessary to inhibit dermatophyte culture growth are far beyond anything that would be encountered in a typical clinical setting. Discussion The primary goal of this study was to assess the claim that dermatophyte cultures must be incubated in the dark to shield them from light, particularly UV light, that might inhibit growth. Because growth inhibition with visible light was not as noteworthy as for the germicidal lamp, later work introduced the idea of photosensitizing dermatophyte cells with eosin before visible light treatment to more effectively inhibit growth. [Extracted from the article]