Adults with myopia may not understand that they have more than just a problem seeing clearly. We discuss genetic risk in glaucoma and macular degeneration – are you doing the same for myopia? How can we talk to myopic adults about risks for their children and support them to take action?
Will China’s new regulations restricting online gaming in children reduce the myopia crisis? Is there evidence that less screen time increases outdoor time? We explore the links and impacts, positive effects of gaming and advice for parents.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments imposed home confinement and school-based learning was the normal. Has this caused more myopia? In this clinical case, the unique environment of lockdown is explored in view of myopia management outcomes.
Young adults wearing the spectacle-mounted Clouclip device to measure viewing behaviour and light exposure also kept an activity diary. Mean daily near work and outdoor time were subjectively reported at about 150% of the objectively measured hours. This indicates the value of objective measures in research, as well as for clinical education and behaviour modification tools in future.
Light-emitting glasses worn by young adults for 1-2 hours reduced axial length and increased choroidal thickness by around 20 microns compared to darkness. The study participants viewed a colour-muted television at 5m while indoors, and the changes regressed within 30 minutes. A future myopia treatment to increase ‘outdoor’ time?
A country-wide intervention to increase outdoor time in 5-6 year olds resulted in the prevalence of myopia decreasing from 15% in the 2014 cohort (before the intervention) to 8% in 2016 cohort (exposed to the intervention for up to two years) and was stable for three years thereafter. Increasing outdoor time works!
Parents can often ask for advice and help with managing screen time for their children. Here we provide a summary of government and health organization screen time guidelines for children, as well as resources for eye care practitioners to use in communication with parents.
There is general widespread accepted belief that increasing time spent outdoors can be protective against progression of myopia. Xiong et al set out to better understand the research by performing a meta-analysis of 51 clinical trials and longitudinal studies that investigated the relationship between time spent outdoors and the risk of either developing myopia, progression of existing myopia or a myopic shift in refractive error.
This paper investigates the relationship between myopia, the objective measure of smartphone data usage and self reported duration of smartphone use in school children and university students with a secondary aim to assess whether study outcomes changed with age.
The authors evaluated the Rotterdam, The Netherlands Generation R dataset to establish the risk factors associated with change to axial eye length and incidence of myopia in children from age 6 to 9 yrs.
