ArticleNational science review2021
Natural selection contributes to the myopia epidemic.
Article in National science review, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence of myopia among 26,697 school-aged children and adolescents in Taiyuan.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Microevolutionary hypothesis of the obesity epidemic.PloS one · 2024Article
- Evidence for the role of selection for reproductively advantageous alleles in human aging.Science advances · 2023Article
- Patterns and evolutionary consequences of pleiotropy.Annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The prevalence of myopia, or nearsightedness, has skyrocketed in the past few decades, creating a public health crisis that is commonly attributed to lifestyle changes. Here we report an overall increase in the frequencies of myopia-associated mutant alleles over 25 years among participants of the UK Biobank. Although myopia itself appears to be selected against, many of the mutant alleles are associated with reproductive benefits, suggesting that reproduction-related selection inadvertently contributes to the myopia epidemic. We estimate that, in the UK alone, natural selection adds more than 100 000 myopia cases per generation, and argue that antagonistic pleiotropy be broadly considered in explaining the spreads of apparently disadvantageous phenotypes in humans and beyond.
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Registered trials
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