Association Between Breastfeeding and Likelihood of Myopia in Children
- Yap-Seng Chong, MD
-
obgcys@nus.edu.sg
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
National University of Singapore
National University Hospital
Singapore
- Yu Liang, MSc;
- Donald Tan, FRCOphth
-
Singapore Eye Research Institute
Singapore
- Gus Gazzard, FRCOphth
-
Institute of Ophthalmology
London, England
- Richard A. Stone, MD
-
Department of Ophthalmology
Scheie Eye Institute
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Philadelphia
- Seang-Mei Saw, PhD
-
Department of Community, Occupational, and Family Medicine
National University of Singapore
Singapore
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- BREASTFEEDING
- CHILD
- MOTHER-CHILD RELATIONS
- MYOPIA
To the Editor: Nearsightedness is the leading cause of visual impairment in developed countries, present in 30.4 million adults in the United States alone.1 The increasing prevalence of myopia, especially among urban Asian children,2 suggests that early lifestyle factors may play a role. Early visual experiences affect the growth of the eye,3 and nutritionally mediated deficiencies in retinal or visual development in infancy may predispose to myopia. We therefore studied the association of breastfeeding with myopia in Asian school children by using the population in the Singapore Cohort Study of the Risk Factors for Myopia.
Methods
The study population was taken from all children in grades 1 to 3 of a single junior school in Singapore in 2001, with an 80.2% participation rate. Children with congenital eye disorders were excluded. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of this cohort in May 2004, when the participants were ages 10 to …
