Children who wore myopia-reducing lenses retained the benefit of the treatment even after stopping wearing them in adolescence, according to an American follow-up study. The authors thus observe that in these young people, stopping the use of lenses is followed by normal axial growth of the eye. A good surprise because, as in cases of myopia in children, the eye grows as it lengthens, it was feared that by ceasing to wear the lenses, “the eye develops more quickly than normal”.
This study, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and published in the Jama Ophtalmology, follows the Blink clinical trial. This initial work showed that soft contact lenses – designed to improve peripheral vision and correct distance vision – were very effective in slowing the growth of the eye and therefore slowing down myopia in children. Participants in the follow-up study (Blink 2) wore these brake lenses for the first two years, then corrective contact lenses for the third, in order to check whether the benefits remained after stopping.
More effective treatment if started early
At the end of Blink 2, the authors noted that the axial growth of the eyes of the participants (n = 235, median age of 15 years) after stopping the brake lenses had generally returned to the rates expected for their age, despite a slight increase (of 0.03 mm/year) and a slight progression of myopia (of -0.17 diopters per year). Variations that the authors describe as “clinically small”. Thus, the participants who wore the brake lenses were less myopic.
-Another lesson from the study is that this lasting improvement was only possible in children who started wearing brake lenses at a young age (7-11 years) and who continued to wear them late into adolescence. Indeed, children who started wearing the brake lenses during the Blink 2 follow-up, and not from the start of Blink, did not benefit from the same level of improvement. Thus, according to the authors, these results “suggest that it is reasonable to fit children with brake lenses at an early age and continue treatment until late adolescence, when the progression of myopia has slowed.”
Return to the initial Blink study
In the main Blink study, 294 myopic children, aged 7 to 11 years, were randomized to wear either corrective contact lenses or soft lenses to improve peripheral vision and correct myopia (contact lenses). multifocal lenses) at +2.50 diopters or +1.50 diopters. Participants wore the lenses during the day as often as they could comfortably do so for three years. As a result, children in the +2.50 diopter multifocal lens group had shorter eyes, slower eye growth and slower myopia progression than the others.
