MYZE, the only digital health platform focused exclusively on elevating and accelerating the importance of DAILY eye health, today announced that its funded study, “The Effect of Prolonged Gaming on The Development of Dry Eye Symptoms in College Age Students” has been selected to be presented as a poster at the 2023 East/West Eye Care Conference to be held November 1-4, 2023 in Columbus, Ohio.
The objective of this IRB approved research, performed by Edmund P. Farris, MD at Qunnipiac University, was to investigate the impact of extended, four-hour gaming sessions with restricted fluid intake on the occurrence of dry eye among college-aged students. Cecelia Koetting, OD, FAAO, optometrist and instructor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus will be present to discuss these data.
The findings indicate that prolonged gaming sessions, in front of a digital screen, may result in the emergence of dry eye symptoms, including discomfort/irritation and eye fatigue, along with heightened levels of inflammatory markers in specific individuals.
Dr. Farris, associate clinical professor of Ophthalmology at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, and associate clinical professor of Medicine at Frank H. Netter School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University, and CMO of MYZE said, "As far as we know, this is the first research of its kind to investigate the production of dry eye symptoms within the gaming community. One of our current research objectives at MYZE is to further delve into the effects of gaming on ocular health and assess the potential therapeutic advantages of short and long-term interventional dry eye treatments with understudied populations, such as gamers and college-aged students."
The poster abstract can be found here: https://www.eastwesteye.org/about-us/posters/
According to recent reports on video gaming statistics, Over 227 million people in the US play video games one to a few hours per week.
People between 18 and 34 comprise 38% of gamers in the US. According to a survey of console gamers in the United States reported by Statista, some 11 percent of 3,581 respondents stated that in general, they spent more than 20 hours per week playing video games.
As of June 2023, approximately 30 percent of U.S. console gamers played about one to five hours of video games per week.