Original articleOutdoor Activity and Myopia among Primary Students in Rural and Urban Regions of Beijing
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
The study included children attending primary schools (grades 1 and 4) from rural regions and urban areas of Greater Beijing. The study protocol was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the TongRen Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing. After explanation of the study design to parents and children, informed, written consent was obtained from at least 1 parent.
The children underwent a comprehensive eye examination, including measurement of visual acuity and
Results
The study included 681 children (Table 1 available at http://aaojournal.org). Of the 681 children, 370 (54.3%) lived in the urban region. The mean refractive error of the right eye was −0.55±1.31 D, the mean axial length was 23.03±0.96 mm, and the mean ratio of axial length to anterior corneal curvature (AL/CC) was 2.94±0.11 (Table 1). The mean daily time spent outdoors was 1.6±0.8 hours, and the daily time spent indoors studying was 5.3±0.9 hours, watching television was 0.9±1.0 hours, and
Discussion
Recent studies of the myopic shift in the young generation of urban East Asian and Southeast Asian populations have focused on factors that potentially influenced the development of myopia in children. These studies revealed that myopia was associated with parental myopia,11, 12, 13, 14 near work,12, 20, 22, 24, 25 school achievements and other school-associated factors,12, 15, 19 and less outdoor activity and time spent outdoors.13, 17, 26, 27, 30 The results of our study confirm these
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Manuscript no. 2012-196.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article.