Tag : Nearsightedness

Ohio (US): According to the findings of recent clinical research, the first medication therapy to reduce the onset of nearsightedness in children may be on the horizon. The three-year study found that a daily drop in each eye of a low dose of atropine, a drug used to dilate pupils, was better than a placebo at limiting eyeglass prescription changes and inhibiting elongation of the eye in nearsighted children aged 6 to 10. That elongation leads to myopia, or nearsightedness, which starts in young kids and continues to get worse into the teen years before leveling off in most people. In addition to requiring life-long vision correction, nearsightedness increases the risk for retinal detachment, macular degeneration, cataracts and glaucoma later in life - and most corrective lenses don't do anything to stop myopia progression. "The idea of keeping eyeballs smaller isn't just so people's glasses are thinner - it would also be so that in their 70s they don't suffer visual impairment," said lead study author Karla Zadnik, professor and dean of the College of Optometry at The Ohio State University. "This is exciting work for the myopia research community, which I've been part of for 35 years. We've talked about treatment and control for decades," she said. "And it's exciting to think that there could be options in the future for millions of children we know are going to be myopic." The results of the CHAMP (Childhood Atropine for Myopia Progression) trial are published today (June 1, 2023) in JAMA Ophthalmology. About one in three adults worldwide is nearsighted, and the global prevalence of myopia is predicted to increase to 50% by 2050. Though one federally approved contact lens can slow progression of nearsightedness, no pharmaceutical pro ...