Treatments to stop the progression of myopia in children

How stop the progression of myopia and identify which current treatments would be the most effective was the objective that the scientists of the study that I share with you today (you will find the link to the study at the end of the post)

The increase in myopia, more specifically the increasing number of myopic young people in the world, is one of the issues that most concerns many countries in which this refractive error is becoming a real public health problem that threatens the future of generations of children and adolescents, and therefore that of the entire country.

In this post I share with you the conclusions of the update of a study that was carried out by Cochrane in 2018. The objective of this update was evaluate if there are treatments that can delay or stop the progression of myopia In the kids. For this, this new review analyzed the effectiveness of glasses, contact lenses (rigid and soft) and the use of medications, to see if these “treatments”, alone or in combination, were effective in curbing the increase in myopia.

Eye growth with key factor analysis

The basic principle around which this review has revolved has been the study of the biological mechanisms that model and define the final size of the eyeball. During childhood and adolescence, the eyeballs can grow too large and this overgrowth ends up causing the development of myopia, the objective was therefore to assess whether there are treatments that can delay the growth of the eye, which would slow down or even stop the progression of myopia.

What were the main results of this review?

Cochrane researchers found and analyzed the results of 41 studies about treatments to slow the progression of myopia. These studies included a total of 6,772 children. To be more exact, the scientists excluded from their review all studies in which the participants were over 18 years old at the start of the study or had less than 0.25 diopter equivalent spherical myopia.

In addition, the researchers evaluated the certainty of the evidence found in each of these studies, taking into account problems such as the way in which the tests were carried out, the inclusion of very small studies, and inconsistent findings between studies. They also looked for factors that could make the evidence as safe as possible, which led them to classify each finding as certain: very low, low, moderate, or high.

The conclusion of this review found that the treatments that you will find below can delay the progression of myopiacompared to wearing regular glasses.

• Eye drops, particularly antimuscarinic drugs such as atropine, pirenzepine gel, and cyclopentolate (moderate-certainty evidence).
• multifocal glasses (bifocal or progressive addition lenses) (moderate-certainty evidence).
• bifocal contact lenses soft (low-certainty evidence).
• contact lenses orthokeratology (moderate-certainty evidence).
• combinations of eye drops and glasses multifocal (moderate-certainty evidence).

The review found that the following treatments may have little or no effect on myopia progression.

• soft contact lenses of spherical aberration (low-certainty evidence).
• Antagonists systematic of the adenosine (moderate-certainty evidence).

children who wear glasses with their refractive error incorrectly corrected may have a higher chance of myopia progression compared with children wearing glasses with perfect correction of their myopia (low-certainty evidence).

In the set of studies, only one very low-certainty evidence for the benefit of wearing rigid contact lenses permeable to gas to curb myopia.

As for the flip of the coin, the study authors noted that pharmaceutical drop treatments can cause side effects unpleasant like: blurred near vision, sensitivity to light, some discomfort and itching, and medication residue on the eyelids and eyelashes. Some children may develop small nodules or bumps under the eyelid. However, glasses and contact lenses, if used properly, are safe and effective.

Regarding the implications for practice and research, the authors stressed that more research on myopia control needs to be done to find a treatment that is clinically meaningful and beneficial with fewer adverse side effects.

I hope you find it useful and interesting, then the link to the study, good reading.

Cochrane. Interventions to slow progression of nearsightedness in children

By the way, I won’t mention his name but recently a well-known brand of contact lenses has launched lenses specially designed to stop the progression of myopia in children, having said that and if you still don’t know who it is, I leave you the task of using Google to name the manufacturer and its product.