Clinically meaningful myopia progresses in small proportion of young adults
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Key takeaways:
- Annualized progression was –0.1 D for those aged 18 to 21 years.
- Annualized progression was –0.04 D for those aged 27 to 30 years.
Myopia continued to progress at a rate of –0.25 D per year in a small proportion of young adults, according to a study published in Optometry and Vision Science.
“The results from this retrospective analysis are consistent with other reports which suggest that, whilst, on average, myopia does not progress by substantial amounts throughout the adult years, particularly after the age of 21 years, there are a small proportion of adult myopes who continue to progress at a clinically meaningful level,” Hashim Ali Kahn, OD, FAAO, and colleagues at the University of New South Wales, wrote.
The longitudinal analysis of 354 adults aged 18 to 30 years included historical and clinical data gathered between January 2000 and mid-March 2021. Mean baseline subjective refractive error for all participants was –3.33 D.
In a cohort of 18- to 21-year-olds, mean annualized progression was –0.1 D, with 18.3% deemed to be progressors. For those aged 22 to 26 years, mean progression was –0.08 D per year and 10.9% were progressors. In a cohort of 27- to 30-year-olds, mean progression was 0.04 D, with 8.8% deemed to be progressors.
Overall, myopia progression per year in the entire cohort was only –0.09 D. In 15.1%, however, progression was at least –0.25 D per year, the authors said.
“We found the odds of myopia progression in the 18- to 21-year-old group to be twice the odds of progression in the older age groups, but did not find ethnicity or gender to influence the odds of progression,” the authors wrote.
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