The increasing prevalence of myopia and high myopia among high school students in Fenghua city, eastern China: a 15-year population-based survey

Wei Wang,Xinyi Chen,Kaijun Wang,Min Chen,Lina Zhang,Xiaoning Yu,Aimin Wu

doi:10.1186/s12886-018-0829-8

Wei Wang, Xinyi Chen + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12886-018-0829-8

Copy DOI

Abstract

BackgroundMyopia is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children and young adults. Multiple epidemiological studies have confirmed a high prevalence of myopia in Asian countries. However, fewer longitudinal studies have been performed to evaluate the secular changes in the prevalence of myopia, especially high myopia in China. In the present study, we investigated trends in the prevalence of myopia among high school students in Fenghua city, eastern China, from 2001 to 2015.MethodsThis was a population-based, retrospective study. Data were collected among 43,858 third-year high school students. Noncycloplegic autorefraction was used to determine refractive error, which was defined as low myopia, moderate myopia, high myopia and very high myopia according to the spherical equivalent from the worse eye of each participant. The prevalence of myopia was calculated and the annual percentage change (APC) was used to quantify the time trends. All analyses were conducted using the SPSS, Stata and Graphpad Prism software.ResultsFrom 2001 to 2015, the prevalence of overall myopia increased from 79.5% to 87.7% (APC =0.59%), with a significant increase of moderate myopia (38.8% to 45.7%, APC = 0.78%), high myopia (7.9% to 16.6%, APC = 5.48%) and very high myopia (0.08% to 0.92%, APC = 14.59%), while the prevalence of low myopia decreased from 32.7% to 24.4% (APC = − 1.73%). High myopia and very high myopia contributed the major part of the increasing trend of myopia prevalence (contribution rate 27.00% and 69.07%, respectively).ConclusionsDuring the 15-year period, there was a remarkable increase in the prevalence of high and very high myopia among high school students, which might become a serious public health problem in China for the next few decades.

Highlights

Myopia is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children and young adults
A total of 43,858 high school students were enrolled from 2001 to 2015, including 21,843 (49.8%) males and 22,015 (50.2%) females. Those who had a history of traumas, eye diseases or refractive surgeries were excluded from the analysis
Myopia prevalence was calculated for fifteen 1-year time intervals from 2001 to 2015

Summary

Introduction

Multiple epidemiological studies have confirmed a high prevalence of myopia in Asian countries. We investigated trends in the prevalence of myopia among high school students in Fenghua city, eastern China, from 2001 to 2015. There has been growing evidence that the prevalence of myopia has increased rapidly in many parts of the world, especially in East and South Asia [2, 3]. The prevalence of myopia were 96.5% in 19-year-old males in Seoul in 2010 [4]. In Taiwan, the prevalence of myopia in male military conscripts aged 18 to 24 years was 86.1% in 2010–2011 [5]. In China, the prevalence of myopia was 95.5% in university students in Shanghai [6], 84.6% in school children in Shandong [7]. It has been estimated that myopia will affect nearly 5 billion people by the year 2050 and become a major public health challenge [10]

Methods

Results

Conclusion