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Factors influencing myopia stabilisation in young myopic adult Singaporeans
  1. Li Lian Foo1,2,3,
  2. Chuen-Seng Tan4,
  3. Brennan Noel5,
  4. Hla M Htoon2,
  5. Raymond P Najjar2,3,6,
  6. Biten Kathrani5,
  7. Charumathi Sabanayagam2,3,
  8. Seang-Mei Saw2,3,4
  1. 1Singapore National Eye Centre, Singapore
  2. 2Singapore Eye Research Institute, Singapore
  3. 3Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  4. 4National University Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, Singapore
  5. 5Johnson & Johnson Vision, Jacksonville, Florida, USA
  6. 6Department of Ophthalmology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore
  1. Correspondence to Dr Seang-Mei Saw, Singapore Eye Research Institute, Singapore, Singapore; ephssm{at}nus.edu.sg

Abstract

Purpose To evaluate factors influencing stabilisation of myopia in the Singapore Cohort of Risk factors for Myopia.

Methods We evaluated the longitudinal natural history of 424 myopic participants from 1999 to 2022. The outcome was the change in myopia from the adolescence follow-up visit (aged 12–19 years) to the adulthood follow-up visit (aged 26–33 years). Association of predictive factors, including baseline spherical error, gender, ethnicity, parental myopia, time outdoor, near work and age at adolescence, was examined with the dichotomous outcome of adult myopia progression (≤ −1.00 dioptres (D) over 10 years) using multiple logistic regression and progression in linear regression models.

Results For the primary outcome, the mean rate of progression of the outcome was found to be −0.04±0.09 D per year from the adolescent to the adulthood follow-up visits. 82.3% (95% CI 78.3% to 85.8%) had myopia stabilisation, with progression of less than 1.00 D over 10 years while 61.3% (95% CI 56.5% to 66.0%) of the subjects had progression of less than 0.50 D. In logistic regression models, both male gender (p=0.035) and non-Chinese ethnicity (p=0.032) were more likely to achieve myopia stabilisation while in linear multivariate regression models, males had a significantly slower degree of myopia progression (p=0.021).

Conclusion 5 in 6 Singaporean young adults had myopia stabilisation. Male gender is 2 times and non-Chinese ethnicities are 2.5 times more likely to achieve myopia stabilisation. However, a proportion of myopes continue to exhibit a clinically significant degree of progression in adulthood.

  • Epidemiology

Data availability statement

Data are available on reasonable request.

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Data availability statement

Data are available on reasonable request.

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Footnotes

  • Twitter @Ray_Najjar

  • Correction notice This article has been updated since it was first published. An additional affiliation has been added for Raymond P Najjar.

  • Contributors LLF, C-ST, BN, HMH, RPN, BK, CS and S-MS conceptualised the manuscript, researched its contents, wrote the manuscript and edited all revisions. S-MS is guarantor.

  • Funding This work is supported by National Medical Research Council Individual Research Grant (NMRC/0975/2005) and National Medical Research Council Center Grant (NMRC/CG/C010A/2017_SERI).

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.