Spending more time indoors and on screens because of COVID-19 restrictions could be linked to an increased rate of short-sightedness in children, researchers say.
The study, which looked at two groups of children aged six to eight in Hong Kong, is the latest to suggest that lockdowns and other restrictions might have taken a toll on eyesight: data from more than 120,000 children of a similar age in China, published earlier this year, suggested a threefold increase in the prevalence of shortsightedness, or myopia, last year.
Jason Yam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a coauthor of the new study, said “near work” — such as reading, writing or watching TV — is believed to be a risk factor for myopia, while increased outdoor time has been consistently shown to have a protective role.
However, COVID-19 restrictions had kept many indoors.
“In Hong Kong, schools were closed for months, and even recreational facilities such as playgrounds, sports grounds, and even outdoor campsites and country parks, were shut,” Yam said.
Small living spaces and a paucity of private outdoor spaces meant that many families had no choice but to stay home or stay indoors.
“Naturally, more time was spent on reading, watching television or using computers, smartphones or other digital devices,” he said.
Writing in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, Yam and his colleagues reported how they recruited one group of schoolchildren in 2015, and another group between Dec. 1 2019 and Jan. 24 last year, when the pandemic began.
The former group was followed up after three years, the latter after eight months.
As well as carrying out eye examinations, the team asked children about the amount of time they spent outdoors and on screens, and doing other near work.
The results, from 709 children in the pandemic-era group and 1,084 in the pre-pandemic-era group, revealed that short-sightedness was more common in the latter group, with about one in three children developing myopia over the three years, compared with about one in five of the pandemic-era group developing it over eight months.
However, after taking into account the follow-up duration of each cohort, the team found an estimated annual incidence of myopia of almost 30 percent in the pandemic-era group, compared with just under 12 percent in the pre-pandemic-era group, suggesting a 2.5-fold increase in myopia incidence during the pandemic.
The study also revealed dramatic changes in outdoor time between recruitment and follow-up of the pandemic-era group, falling from about 75 minutes a day to 24 minutes after restrictions were introduced.
Over the same period, the children’s time on near work, including use of screens, rose from just under 3.5 hours per day to about 8 hours per day.
“Our study showed that less time spent outdoors and more time spent on near work, including screen time, is associated with faster progression in short-sightedness, or myopia, which sounds like an innocuous condition, but can actually predispose one to multiple ocular complications and increase risk of irreversible vision loss later in life,” Yam said.
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