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Heavy computer use associated with glaucoma in people with refractive errors

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The longer people with myopia spend staring at a computer screen on a daily basis, the higher their risk of developing glaucoma, according to a group of Japanese researchers.

Masayuki Tatemichi, MD, and colleagues at the Toho University School of Medicine screened 10,202 randomly selected Japanese workers for visual field defects using frequency doubling technology (FDT) perimetry. The mean age of the workers was 43.2 years. Information about their computer use, family ocular history and refractive error was gathered.

On the FDT perimetry test, 522 subjects were positive and 8,602 subjects were negative for visual field abnormalities. A significant association was found between visual field abnormality and computer use in subjects with refractive errors. A stratified analysis found that computer users with refractive errors showed a significant positive association with visual field abnormalities on FDT perimetry. Subjects with no refractive error did not show the same association.

In an analysis of 165 subjects with a medical diagnosis of glaucoma, 141 also had refractive errors, especially myopia, the authors found.

“This is the first study on visual field abnormalities in heavy computer users that used highly sensitive perimetry to assess a large number of subjects,” the authors reported in the December issue of Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The authors noted that classification based on computer use in the workplace might be a potential cause of selection bias, but “it seemed that heavy computer users without refractive errors had a decreased risk for [visual field abnormalities on FDT perimetry], and that heavy computer users had a lower incidence of other ocular diseases such as cataract and diabetic retinopathy.”

Limitations of the study included that it was cross-sectional and that comparatively few women were studied because of the demographics of the Japanese workforce, the authors said. Additionally, refractive errors were not determined ophthalmologically in all participants, and family histories of glaucoma are often incomplete.