Childhood myopia determined more by parents than reading time, study finds

Parental history of myopia and IQ scores were linked to incident myopia in a study of children in Singapore, but the number of books read per week was not, researchers said.

Seang-Mei Saw, MD, and colleagues in Singapore conducted a 3-year cohort study of children aged 7 to 9 years in three schools, controlling for school, age, gender, income, reading time per week and IQ test scores. The main outcome was incident myopia, which the researchers defined as a spherical equivalent of at least –0.75 D based on cycloplegic refraction.

The researchers found the relative risk of incident myopia to be 1.55 for children with two myopic parents versus those whose parents did not have myopia. Similar results were found when incident myopia was defined as spherical equivalents of –0.5 D and –1 D, the study authors said.

This study was published in the May issue of Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science.