ArticleTranslational vision science & technology2024
Estimating the True Effect of Lifestyle Risk Factors for Myopia: A Longitudinal Study of UK Children.
Article in Translational vision science & technology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Multiple trajectories of life style indicators and their links to myopia in the middle school students: A five-year cohort study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- IMI-2025 Digest.Investigative ophthalmology & visual science · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Purpose: Lifestyle risk factors are implicated in driving the current surge in myopia prevalence yet, paradoxically, known risk factors explain little of the variation in refractive error in the population. Here, we applied "instrumental variable" (IV) methods designed to avoid reverse causation and decrease confounding bias, to gauge lifestyle risk factor effect sizes. Methods: Three myopia risk factors (time outdoors, time reading, and sleep duration) were assessed in participants of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children: a cross-sectional sample of 2302 children aged 15 years old and a longitudinal sample of 3086 children followed from age 7 to 15 years. Seven IVs were considered jointly: dog ownership, cat ownership, bedtime variability, birth order, and polygenic scores quantifying genetic predisposition to spend additional time outdoors, years in fulltime education, and time asleep overnight. Results: Risk factor effect sizes were 4-fold to 9-fold higher in the IV analyses compared with conventional regression analyses. In IV analyses, one extra hour spent outdoors every day during childhood was associated with a shift toward hyperopia of +0.53 to +0.94 diopters (D), whereas 1 extra hour spent reading every day was associated with a shift toward myopia of -0.44 to -0.88 D. There was inconsistent evidence that sleep duration influenced refractive error. Conclusions: Myopia risk factor effects were underestimated up to 9-fold in conventional analyses in this sample, compared with IV analyses. Translational Relevance: We speculate that the effects of lifestyle risk factors for myopia have been underestimated in past studies.
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Registered trials
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