Eye Disorders in African-American and Hispanic Young Children

It is important to keep up with those well-baby check ups, especially for the preschool refractive error screenings. Research results show that children with amblyopia or “lazy eye” usually regain normal vision if treated early. Lazy eye disorder is one eye increasingly does the work of seeing while the other loses vision.

In January of 2010, the journal of the AmericanAcademy of Ophthalmology, Ophthalmology, includes a research review findings from a Multi-Ethnic Pediatric Eye Disease Study. It was the first large study of vision disorder in Hispanic and African-American infants and toddlers by the Doheny Eye Institute of the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. The study includes about 3,000 of Hispanic and 3,000 African –American children from 6 months to 6 years old. Doctor RohitVarma, MPH, and colleagues report their findings on refractive error, which is the leading cause of vision problems in young children as follow.

Normally, measured in eye exams, children had less than 1 diopter of myopia (nearsightedness) and more than 4 diopters of hyperopia (farsightedness). The study found that 90 percents of children were in normal range. However, the study showed 6.6 percents of African – American children were myopia and only 3.7 percents of Hispanic children were myopia. While there were 26.9 percents of hyperopia Hispanic children and only 20.8 percents of hyperopia African – American children. The results also showed that the both eye disorders improve with age for children between 6 months to 11 months for myopia children and between 6 months to 24 months for hyperopia children. However, both eye disorders increased again in both ethnic groups.

Researchers think to esotropia (one eye turned inward) and anisometropia (a difference of more than 1 diopter of refractive error between the two eyes) may be related to persistent hyperopia and the onset of esotropia. The study shows that esotropia may occur between 2 to 3 years old and anisometropia is decrease between 6 months to 2 years old but stable after the babies are 2 years old.

Even though more studies are needed to further assess anisometropic changes over time and relate anisometropia levels to risk for developing amblyopia and strabismus to develop effective vision screening. Anisometropia is associated with strabismus (misaligned eyes) and with amblyopia. Amblyopia or "lazy eye" is an eye disorder in which one eye increasingly does the work of seeing while the other loses vision. However, a child with amblyopia can regains normal vision if he or she receives early and consistent treatment. Therefore, Dr.Varma said that it is important to have preschool refractive error screening for infants and young children. These exams could detect many children with amblyopia related to anisometropia to start the treatment early.