Near work, education, family history, and myopia in Greek conscripts

Abstract

Aims To investigate potential factors associated with the presence of myopia in a cohort of young adult men carrying out their military service in Greece. Methods A nested case-control study of 200 conscripts (99 myopes and 101 non-myopes). The cohort consisted of approximately 1000 conscripts in compulsory national service. All cohort members had been screened for refractive errors by Snellen visual acuity measurement at presentation to military service; individuals not achieving visual activity 6/6 underwent noncycloplaegic refraction. The study sample consisted of the first 99 myopic and 101 nonmyopic conscripts who attended the study. In-person interviews of these 200 conscripts were conducted to obtain information on family history, occupation, level of education, near-work activities, and sleeping behaviour. v 2 and Mann-Whitney tests were used as univariate analysis methods to identify the potential factors associated with the presence of myopia. Multiple logistic regression was used to estimate the adjusted relative risk of myopia. Results Univariate analysis showed that parental family history (Po0.001), older age (Po0.001), tertiary education (Po0.001), hours of reading per day (Po0.001), hours of computer use per day (Po0.001), and higher social classes (Po0.001) were associated with myopia. Sleeping in artificial or ambient light was not associated with myopia (P ¼ 0.75). Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that older age (OR ¼ 1.25, 95% CI 1.05-1.49), tertiary education (OR ¼ 12.67, 95% CI 3.57-44.88) and parental family history (OR ¼ 3.39, 95% CI 1.56-7.36) were independently associated with myopia. Conclusion In young Greek conscripts, parental family history, older age, and education level are independently associated with myopia.

Association between parental myopia and the risk of myopia in a child

“…Following this review, a number of manuscripts were excluded due to information, including outcome, the exposure of interest or essential data, being omitted. A total of 16 studies were eligible for final inclusion (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34). Of these, six were prospective cohort (12,13,15,17,31,32), eight were cross-sectional (14,16,(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)35) and two were case-control studies (33,34).…”

“…The present meta-analysis included 16 studies with 8,393 cases of myopia. The selected studies were from four continents (seven from Asia (14,16,26,28,32,34,35), four from Europe (17,29,31,33), three from the United States (12,13,30) and two from Australia (15,27). All of the studies recruited male and female participants aged ≤31 years.…”

“…The majority of studies used questionnaires to ascertain the parents' history of myopia and to assess whether parents wore spectacles or contact lenses at the time of the study. Seven of the studies identified the participants' myopia as a spherical equivalent refraction (SER) ≤-0.5 diopters (D) (14)(15)(16)27,28,33,35) and two studies identified the participants' myopia as a SER ≤-0.75 D (26,32). Three of the studies reported the participants' myopia as a SER ≤-0.75 D in the horizontal and vertical meridians following cycloplegic autorefraction (12,13,30).…”

The role of reading, writing, using a computer, or watching television in the development of myopia

“…An important environmental factor that influences the development of myopia is visual near work [4]. Many authors believe that reading, writing, and using a computer lead to a higher prevalence of myopia [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. However, there have also been some publications that have not found such an association [17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

“…In the majority of these studies no dependency between watching television and myopia has been described [6,7,9,17].…”