A 2022 study from Experimental Eye Research offers a potential basis for future treatment to slow or even prevent myopia development in children: chromatic visual cues.
Tell me about the study.
Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham placed tree shrews in a small cage with a restricted viewing distance of a video display to induce myopia. When the blue channel of the video display was then blurred, the group’s axial elongation slowed and they became significantly hyperopic.
What does this tell us?
According to the researchers, since the eye focuses different wavelengths of light at different points, adjusting the sharpness of these wavelengths might promote the eye to adjust its growth in order to focus appropriately.
This sounds familiar…
Repeated Low-Level Red Light (RLRL) therapy is an emerging treatment for myopia control that uses semiconductor laser diodes to deliver red light to the fundus via the pupil. Multiple clinical studies involving human patients and light therapy devices are ongoing in China and the United States among others. Much of the support for RLRL is based on the demonstrated protective effects of red light on the cornea and retina as well as its effects on axial growth.
The take home.
Myopia has been characterized as a global epidemic, with a projected prevalence of up to 50% worldwide by 2050. This study offers further evidence in support of RLRL therapy as well as other possible avenues for the use of chromatic visual cues in myopia control.