- Title
- The effect of long-term low-dose atropine on refractive progression in myopic Australian school children
- Creator
- Myles, William; Dunlop, Catherine; McFadden, Sally A.
- Relation
- Journal of Clinical Medicine Vol. 10, Issue 7, no. 1444
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jcm10071444
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Myopia will affect half the global population by 2050 and is a leading cause of vision impairment. High-dose atropine slows myopia progression but with undesirable side-effects. Low-dose atropine is an alternative. We report the effects of 0.01% or 0.005% atropine eye drops on myopia progression in 13 Australian children aged between 2 and 18 years and observed for 2 years without and up to 5 years (mean 2.8 years) with treatment. Prior to treatment, myopia progression was either ‘slow’ (more positive than −0.5 D/year; mean −0.19 D/year) or ‘fast’ (more negative than −0.5 D/year; mean −1.01 D/year). Atropine reduced myopic progression rates (slow: −0.07 D/year, fast: −0.25 D/year, combined: before: −0.74, during: −0.18 D/year, p = 0.03). Rebound occurred in 3/4 eyes that ceased atropine. Atropine halved axial growth in the ‘Slow’ group relative to an age-matched model of untreated myopes (0.098 vs. 0.196 mm/year, p < 0.001) but was double that in emmetropes (0.051 mm/year, p < 0.01). Atropine did not slow axial growth in ‘fast’ progressors compared to the age-matched untreated myope model (0.265 vs. 0.245 mm/year, p = 0.754, Power = 0.8). Adverse effects (69% of patients) included dilated pupils (6/13) more common in children with blue eyes (5/7, p = 0.04). Low-dose atropine could not remove initial myopia offsets suggesting treatment should commence in at-risk children as young as possible.
- Subject
- myopia; atropine; 0.01%; eye growth; refractive error; Australia
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1435632
- Identifier
- uon:39775
- Identifier
- ISSN:2077-0383
- Rights
- © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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