Lid closure and refractive error in macaque monkeys

Abstract

IT has been suggested that lid suture in visually immature macaques¹ and tree shrews² causes myopia. Wiesel and Raviola suggested that this myopia is of the axial type and caused by elongation of the globe¹. Sherman et al. were unable to correlate the axial length with the degree of myopia in their experimental animals and suggest that lenticular or corneal anomalies may account for myopia in lid-sutured eyes². If myopia could thus be produced experimentally in one eye, the other eye serving as a control, a useful and urgently needed animal model for the study of the pathogenesis of myopia and of the effects of anisometropia on development of visual functions would be available. However, we have been unable to confirm a consistent relationship between myopia and lid suture in the macaque. In view of this discrepancy we are reporting the refraction data collected from 13 male colony-bred rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) that were used for studies of the behavioural, neurophysiological and anatomical effects of lid suture on the development of visual functions^3–8.