Childhood ‘lazy eye’ may be tied to future cardiometabolic risk
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Key takeaways:
- Amblyopia in childhood was associated with increased cardiometabolic risk in adulthood.
- Causality between persisting amblyopia and future cardiometabolic risk could not be established in the present study.
Childhood amblyopia, or “lazy eye,” was associated with increased likelihood of cardiometabolic risk factors in adulthood and a potential for increased risk for heart attack and death, researchers reported.
The data did not show any causal relationship between adulthood cardiometabolic disease and childhood amblyopia, according to study findings published in eClinicalMedicine.
“Amblyopia is an eye condition affecting up to four in 100 children. In the U.K., all children are supposed to have vision screening before the age of 5, to ensure a prompt diagnosis and relevant ophthalmic treatment,” Jugnoo Rahi, FMedSci, professor of ophthalmic epidemiology at the University College London (UCL) Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Great Ormond Street Hospital, said in a press release. “It is rare to have a ‘marker’ in childhood that is associated with increased risk of serious disease in adult life, and also one that is measured and known for every child — because of population screening.
“The large numbers of affected children and their families may want to think of our findings as an extra incentive for trying to achieve healthy lifestyles from childhood,” Rahi said in the release.
For this observational study, Rah, Siegfried Karl Wagner, PhD, honorary clinical senior research fellow at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and honorary clinical research fellow at Moorfields Eye Hospital, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 21,702 UK Biobank participants with complete ophthalmic and demographic data.
Within this cohort, 14.8% had confirmed amblyopia, defined as self-reported amblyopia or treatment corroborated by having strabismus, significant anisometropia, significant astigmatism, significant refractive error per se, less severe refractive error but visual impairment without any other underlying eye disease or current emmetropia.
Participants with amblyopia were dichotomized as having either “resolved” amblyopia, with current normal or near normal visual acuity, or “persisting” amblyopia, with residual acuity deficit despite treatment in childhood.
Overall, 82.2% of participants with amblyopia had persisting amblyopia.
Wagner and colleagues observed that individuals with persisting amblyopia were more likely to have obesity (adjusted OR = 1.16; 95% CI, 1.05-1.28), hypertension (aOR = 1.25; 95% CI, 1.13-1.38) and diabetes (aOR = 1.29; 95% CI, 1.04-1.59) compared with individuals without amblyopia.
Moreover, amblyopia was also associated with increased risk for MI (aHR = 1.38; 95% CI, 1.11-1.72) and death (aHR = 1.36; 95% CI, 1.15-1.6), according to the study.
Please see the full study for details on retinal features in both amblyopic eye and unaffected non-amblyopic eyes among study participants.
“We emphasize that our research does not show a causal relationship between amblyopia and ill health in adulthood,” Wagner said in the release. “Our research means that the ‘average’ adult who had amblyopia as a child is more likely to develop these disorders than the ‘average’ adult who did not have amblyopia. The findings don’t mean that every child with amblyopia will inevitably develop cardiometabolic disorders in adult life.”
Reference:
- Children with ‘lazy eye’ are at increased risk of serious disease in adulthood. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1036761. Published March 7, 2024. Accessed March 14, 2024.
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