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Press release
Thursday January 16, 2025
An NIH-funded study finds that eye growth rate returns to normal in older adolescents without loss of treatment benefits.
In a follow-up study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers found that children who wore special contact lenses to slow the progression of myopia, known as nearsightedness, maintained the benefits of the treatment after they stopped wearing the lenses in adolescence. Controlling myopia progression during childhood can help potentially reduce the risk of vision-threatening myopia complications later in life, such as retinal detachment and glaucoma. Rates of myopia have been rising in recent years, suggesting that increased use of personal devices plays a role.
Myopia occurs when a child's developing eyes become too long from front to back. Instead of focusing images directly on the retina (the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye), images of distant objects are focused on a point in front of the retina. As a result, people with myopia have good near vision but poor distance vision.
"There was concern that the eye might grow faster than normal when contact lenses for myopia control were stopped. Our results show that when older adolescents stopped wearing these lenses, the eye returned to the expected growth rate for their age," said lead researcher David A. Berntsen, OD, Ph.D., chair of clinical sciences at the University of Houston College of Optometry.
The new study follows an original clinical trial that showed that soft contact lenses designed to add high focusing power to peripheral vision, along with distance vision correction, were most effective at slowing the rate of eye growth, thereby decreasing the degree of myopia in children. Participants in the follow-up study wore high-add lenses for two years, then single vision contact lenses for the third year of the study to see if the benefit persisted after treatment stopped.
At the end of the follow-up study, axial eye growth returned to age-expected rates. Although there was a small increase (0.03 mm/year) in eye growth in all age groups after discontinuation of multifocal lenses, the overall rate of eye growth was not different from the age-expected rate.
Participants who had been in the high-add multifocal treatment group in the original study continued to have shorter eyes and less myopia at the end of the follow-up study. Children who switched to high-add multifocal contact lenses for the first time during the follow-up study did not catch up with those who had worn high-add lenses since the start of the original clinical trial when they were 7 to 11 years old.
"Our results suggest that it is reasonable to fit children with multifocal contact lenses for myopia control at a younger age and continue treatment through late adolescence, when myopia progression has slowed," said follow-up study chair Jeffrey J. Walline, OD, Ph.D., associate dean for research at The Ohio State University College of Optometry, Columbus.
Single vision glasses and contact lenses can correct nearsighted vision, but they fail to address the underlying problem, which is that the eye continues to grow longer than normal. In contrast, soft multifocal contact lenses correct nearsighted vision in children while simultaneously slowing the progression of myopia by slowing the growth of the eye.
Designed like a target, multifocal contact lenses focus light in two main ways. The central portion of the lens corrects nearsightedness so distance vision is clear, and it focuses light directly onto the retina. The outer portion of the lens adds focusing power to bring peripheral light into focus in front of the retina. Animal studies show that focusing light in front of the retina can slow growth. The higher the focusing power, the farther peripheral light is focused in front of the retina.
In the original study, 294 myopic children, ages 7 to 11, were randomly assigned to wear single vision contact lenses or multifocal lenses with high add power (+2.50 diopters) or medium add power (+1.50 diopters). They wore the lenses during the day as often as they comfortably could for three years.
After three years in the original study, children in the high-power multifocal contact lens group had shorter eyes compared with the medium-power and single-vision groups, and they also had the slowest rate of myopia progression and eye growth.
The study, known as Bifocal Lenses In Nearsighted Kids (BLINK), and the follow-up study, known as BLINK2, published their results today in JAMA Ophthalmology. The study was funded by the NIH's National Eye Institute (NEI).
For more information, visit the NEI Myopia Webpage.
The NEI leads the federal government’s efforts to eliminate vision loss and improve quality of life through vision research…by stimulating innovation, fostering collaboration, expanding the vision workforce, and educating the public and key stakeholders. The NEI supports basic and clinical science programs to develop sight-saving treatments and expand opportunities for people with low vision. For more information, visit https://www.nei.nih.gov.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, comprises 27 institutes and centers and is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency that conducts and supports basic, clinical, and translational medical research, studying the causes, treatments, and cures for common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
NIH…Transforming Discovery into Health®
Reference
Berntsen DA, Ticak, A, Orr DJ, Giannoni AG, Sinnott LT, Mutti Do, Jones-Jordan LA, Walline JJ. “Axial growth and myopia progression after discontinuation of soft multifocal contact lens wear.” Published online January 16, 2025 in JAMA Ophthalmol. Doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2024.5885
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