For three series of blood samples, we have studied the effect of therapeutic doses of low-intensity optical radiation (LOR) on oxygenation parameters of blood irradiated in vivo, and also on the levels of some metabolites: lactate, glucose, cholesterol. The quality of blood oxygenation was assessed using three parameters: the partial pressure of oxygen pVO2, the oxygen saturation of hemoglobin SVO2, and the oxygen level in arterial and venous blood, varying under the infl uence of low-intensity optical radiation due to photodissociation of hemoglobin/ligand complexes. We have established that during photohemotherapy (PHT), including extracorporeal, supravascular, and intravenous blood irradiation, positive changes occur in the oxygenation parameters and the metabolite levels, while after the courses of PHT have been completed, the individual changes in such parameters in individual patients were both positive and negative. The regulatory effect of PHT was apparent in the tendency toward a decrease in high initial values and an increase in low initial values both for the oxygenation parameters and for the metabolites; but at the doses recommended for use, PHT had a regulatory but still not a normalizing effect. Introduction. Application of low-intensity optical radiation (LOR) for medical purposes has considerably outrun experimental and theoretical studies of its effect. Positive outcomes from application of LOR in treatment of various diseases have been mainly noted in the scientifi c literature. Generally phototherapy conditions, radiation sources, and wavelengths are selected empirically. In this case, differences in the photophysical processes initiated in biological tissues by absorption and scattering of radiation at different wavelengths as well as the individual sensitivity of patients to LOR procedures have not been considered. It is attempted to justify such an approach by the lack of accepted ideas about the primary photoacceptors (molecules absorbing radiation) and photoprocesses initiated by LOR in biological tissues, despite the undoubted progress in understanding these questions that has been achieved to date (1-4). At the same time, by now a fair amount is known about the mechanisms for realization of the therapeutic effects of phototherapy, which allows us to analyze the reasons for the contradictory nature of the data on the biological activity of LOR. The aim of this work was to use as a basis the theoretically and experimentally substantiated mechanism of action for photohemotherapy (PHT) to analyze the details of its effect on metabolic processes occurring in different patients, comparing the identifi ed patterns for photomodifi cation of blood and radiation-initiated changes in the levels of some metabolites under the infl uence of LOR at different wavelengths absorbed by blood. Materials and Methods. We studied changes in the blood oxygenation characteristics and metabolite concentrations, directly during individual procedures and also 20-30 min after completion of the course of treatment, in three series of blood samples from patients with cardiovascular diseases. The fi rst series of samples was obtained for extracorporeal UV blood irradiation (UBI) in patients (n = 30) using light from a mercury lamp (O = 254 nm, power density at the surface of the cuvet 1.5 mW/cm 2 ); the course of treatment consisted of fi ve daily procedures. The samples in the second series were blood from patients (n = 20) who had received intravenous blood irradiation (intravenous LBI) procedures daily for seven days in the ulnar vein using radiation from a semiconductor laser (O = 670 nm, 2 mW at the output of the optical fi ber, t = 20 min). The samples in the third series were obtained during supravascular blood irradiation (SLBI) in the patients (n