Visual activity and its association with myopia stabilisation

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the association between outdoor and nearwork activities at baseline and myopia stabilisation by age 15 in the Correction of Myopia Evaluation Trial (COMET). Methods: Correction of Myopia Evaluation Trial enrolled 469 children (ages: 6-11 years) with spherical equivalent myopia between À1.25 and À4.50 D, who were randomised to progressive addition or single vision lenses and followed for 5 years in their original lenses. At baseline, families recorded the child's outdoor and nearwork activities for 3 days within a week. Weekly hours spent in nearwork and outdoor activities were calculated for each participant. Refractions collected over 11 years were fit using the Gompertz function to determine each participant's myopia stabilisation age. Myopia for each child was then categorized as stable/not stable by age 15. Results: Half (233/469) of participants had usable baseline activity diaries and refraction data that could be fit with the Gompertz function, 59.7% (139/233) had stable myopia by age 15 and 40.3% had myopia that was not yet stable. The frequency of stable myopia was similar for the two categories (median split) of outdoor activities: 60% (71/118) for ≤9.0 hours/week À1 and 59% (68/115) for >9.0 hours/week À1 . 56% (64/114) of children reporting >21.0 h of baseline weekly nearwork activity had stable myopia by age 15 compared to 63% (75/119) with ≤21.0 h of near work (adjusted OR = 0.74; 95% CI: 0.43-1.29). Using baseline nearwork as a continuous variable, the multivariable odds ratio for the association between baseline nearwork hours and stabilisation by age 15 is 0.98: 95% CI: 0.96-1.00, a result trending towards significance. Conclusion: While time spent in outdoor activities in childhood does not appear to be related to myopia stabilisation by age 15, less near work activity might potentially be associated with myopia stabilisation by that age.

Time spent in outdoor activities in relation to myopia prevention and control: a meta‐analysis and systematic review

“…No association between time outdoors and myopic progression was observed in study by Scheiman et al. (). The two studies carried out by Pärssinen et al.…”

“…; Scheiman et al. ; Wu et al. ) that investigated the association between outdoor time and a myopic shift in refractive error were excluded.…”

“…; Scheiman et al. ), which was deemed as myopic progression. No association between time outdoors and myopic progression was observed in study by Scheiman et al.…”

Rola aktywności zewnętrznej w rozwoju krótkowzroczności u dzieci w wieku szkolnym

“…It is also known that outdoor activity reduces the prevalence of myopia -table 1 [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. However, lately a number of papers have been published that determined that outdoor activity does not have an influence on the prevalence of myopia -table 2 [18,19,20,21,22,23,24].…”

Peripheral contrast sensitivity and attention in myopia

“…The failure of emmetropization in certain individuals seems to arise from a multitude of factors combining a predisposing genetic susceptibility with a major role for environmental factors, such as a high education level, an increased amount of near work, near work posture (Saw et al, 2002; Scheiman et al, 2014; Wang, Bao, Ou, Thorn, & Lu, 2013), and decreased time spent outdoors (Deng, Gwiazda, & Thorn, 2010; Dirani et al, 2009; Jones et al, 2007; Rose, Morgan, Ip, et al, 2008; Rose, Morgan, Smith, et al, 2008). …”