After a decade of research aimed at combating the rise of nearsightedness, a team led by David Berntsen, the Golden-Golden Professor of Optometry and Chair of Clinical Sciences at the University of Houston College of Optometry, has made a significant breakthrough. Their method to slow the progression of myopia, or nearsightedness, has been found to work and have lasting effects.
The team’s original study, named Bifocal Lenses In Nearsighted Kids (BLINK), demonstrated that the use of high-add power multifocal contact lenses could slow down myopia’s advancement in children. The follow-up study, BLINK2, continued to monitor these children and found that the effects persisted even after discontinuing the use of these lenses.
Berntsen reported in JAMA Ophthalmology, “We found that one year after discontinuing treatment with high-add power soft multifocal contact lenses in older teenagers, myopia progression returns to normal with no loss of treatment benefit.” The research received funding from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health and involved collaborators from the Ohio State University College of Optometry.
Myopia is a significant global issue, with predictions suggesting that by 2050, nearly 50% of the world’s population (around 5 billion people) will be myopic. It’s a condition that poses an increased risk of serious long-term eye health issues that can affect vision and potentially cause blindness.
The BLINK study discovered that high-add multifocal contact lenses could effectively slow down eye growth rate, hence reducing the myopia progression in children. This is crucial as higher degrees of myopia are associated with severe eye diseases such as retinal detachment and glaucoma later in life.
Myopia happens when a child’s eyes grow too long from front to back. This irregular growth causes images to focus in front of the retina instead of directly on it, resulting in blurry distant vision. While single vision prescription glasses and contact lenses can correct the blurry vision, they do not address the root problem—the eye’s continuous abnormal growth.
Multifocal contact lenses, however, tackle both aspects: they correct myopic vision in children and concurrently slow down myopia progression by controlling eye growth. These lenses, designed like a bullseye, focus light in two ways: the center portion corrects nearsightedness for clear distance vision and focuses light directly on the retina, while the outer portion adds focusing power to bring peripheral light into focus in front of the retina.
In the original BLINK study, 294 myopic children aged 7 to 11 wore either single vision contact lenses or multifocal lenses with high-add power (+2.50 diopters) or medium-add power (+1.50 diopters) for three years. After three years, children wearing high-add multifocal contact lenses showed slower myopia progression and eye growth, with their eyes being shorter compared to those wearing medium-add power and single-vision lenses.
The follow-up BLINK2 study involved 248 of the original BLINK participants. They all wore the high-add lenses for two years, followed by single-vision contact lenses for the third year to assess if the benefits remained after discontinuing the multifocal lenses. The findings showed that eye growth returned to normal rates after discontinuing the lenses, with no evidence of faster than normal eye growth.
Studies of other myopia treatments like atropine drops and orthokeratology lenses showed a rebound effect (faster than age-normal eye growth) after treatment was discontinued. However, the BLINK studies suggest that fitting children with multifocal contact lenses for myopia control at a younger age and continuing treatment until the late teenage years is a viable strategy when myopia progression has slowed.
For more information, visit the NEI webpage on myopia. The study received support from NIH grants UG1 EY023204, EY023206, EY023208, EY023210, P30 EY007551, UL1 TR002733.
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