New Study Finds Certain Contact Lenses Can Reduce Nearsightedness

A health care worker checks a patient's eyes in a file photo. Mohd Rasfan/AFP via Getty Images

A recently published government-backed study found that contact lenses can be used to have a lasting effect in slowing down nearsightedness in younger people.

In a National Institutes of Health-funded study released on Jan. 16, researchers discovered that children who wore contact lenses specifically designed to curb nearsightedness, or myopia, saw treatment benefits long after they stopped wearing them when they became older adolescents.

More than 45 million people in the United States wear contact lenses, according to federal health officials, although not everyone who wears them wears lenses specifically designed to treat myopia. However, some researchers forecast that about 50 percent of the world’s population will have myopia by the year 2050.

Researchers with the University of Houston found that giving children multifocal contact lenses to treat myopia starting at a younger age until their teenage years should be considered “a reasonable strategy,” according to a news release from the college on the study’s findings, published 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,” David Berntsen, with the University of Houston, said in a statement.

Their initial study involved nearly 300 children aged 7 to 11 who were randomly assigned to wear either multifocal contact lenses or single-vision lenses. Those who wore the multifocal lenses saw the slowest rate of myopia progression as well as eye growth over a three-year period, the study found.

In their second study, according to researchers, the participants used multifocal lenses for another two years before they were switched to single-vision lenses in their final year.

“The results were clear: the treatment’s positive effects were durable, and there was no evidence of a rebound effect,” the news release said.

Myopia occurs when the eye grows too long from the front to the back and forces the eye to focus at a point in front of the retina, according to the National Institutes of Health. It means that people with the condition have good near sight but poor vision at a distance.

Other methods used to control nearsightedness including atropine eye drops and orthokeratology contact lenses were linked to rebound effects in which the growth of the eye hastens after the treatment was discontinued, they said.

“Multifocal contact lenses appear to offer a safer and more consistent approach to managing myopia. Children who began using these lenses at a younger age and stayed on the treatment for several years had the greatest long-term benefits, with shorter eyes and less severe myopia compared to those who started later,” it also said.

In recent decades, myopia has been on the rise in both the United States and around the world, researchers have said. Some 41 percent of Americans were nearsighted as of 2017, which is up from about 25 percent in 1971, officials say.

Health officials warn that the condition can increase the risk of glaucoma, a chronic eye disease that can lead to a loss of vision or even blindness, as well as retinal detachment or the development of cataracts, a cloudy area in the eye’s lens that can lead to a loss of vision.

Mark Rosenfield, professor at the State University of New York College of Optometry, said in a Harvard University article published last year myopia’s rise could be, in part, attributed to the use of digital screens, although some factors include extensive time spent in dark indoor settings.