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Study: Children with higher myopia have thinner maculas
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A study comparing children with low and high myopia found that the inferior quadrant and overall peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer were significantly thinner in children with high myopia.
“Highly myopic children had significantly thinner macular thickness and lower macular volumes,” according to the study, published in Optometry and Vision Science.
Researchers performed time-domain optical coherence tomography on 15 children with high myopia (at least 6 D) and 20 children with low myopia (between 0.25 D and 3 D). All children were younger than 10 years.
“The mean overall thickness of the peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) was 100.8 µg in the high myopes and 110.5 µg in the low myopes,” according to the study abstract. “There was a statistically significant difference in overall RNFL thickness between the two groups (P < 0.05).”
Peripapillary RNFL thinning was found to be most evident in the inferior quadrant in those with high myopia, and the mean values of macular thickness and volume were also significantly smaller in those with high myopia vs. low myopia, the study said.
“These structural differences should be considered in the clinical assessment of highly myopic children,” the authors concluded.
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