A cohort study of incident myopia in Singaporean children

PURPOSE. To determine the risk factors of incident myopia in a school-based cohort study in Singaporean children. METHODS. A 3-year prospective cohort study was conducted in Singaporean school children aged 7 to 9 years in three schools at entry. Chinese children without myopia at baseline (n = 994) were included in the analysis. The main outcome was incident myopia, defined as spherical equivalent ( SE) at least -0.75 D based on cycloplegic autorefraction. Other definitions of incident myopia, at least -0.5 D and at least 1.0 D, were also assessed. RESULTS. After controlling for school, age, gender, income, reading in books per week and intelligence quotient ( IQ) test scores, we found the relative risk (RR) of incident myopia defined as -0.75 D to be 1.55 ( 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.18-2.04) for two versus no myopic parents. The multivariate RR of myopia for IQ in the third versus first tertile was 1.50 ( 95% CI, 1.19-1.89). However, the RR of incident myopia was 1.01 ( 95% CI, 0.97-1.05) for every unit increase in books read per week. Similar results were obtained with definitions of -0.5 and -1.0 D for incident myopia. CONCLUSIONS. These data provide new prospective evidence of essential links between parental myopia, IQ scores and subsequent myopia development. However, reading in books per week was not associated with incident myopia.