DOES THE MONTH OF BIRTH INFLUENCE THE PREVALENCE OF REFRACTIVE ERRORS?

Maciej Czepita, Leszek Kuprjanowicz, Krzysztof Safranow, Artur Mojsa, Ewa Majdanik, Maria Ustianowska, Damian Czepita

Abstract


Purpose: The aim of our study was to examine whether the month of birth influences the prevalence of refractive errors.

Material and methods: A total of 5,601 schoolchildren were examined (2,688 boys and 2,913 girls, aged 6–18 years, mean age 11.9, SD 3.2 years). The children examined, students of elementary and secondary schools, were Polish and resided in and around Szczecin, Poland. Every examined subject underwent retinoscopy under cycloplegia using 1% tropicamide. Data analysis was performed using the Kruskal–Wallis test followed by the Siegel and Castellan post-hoc test or the Mann–Whitney U-test. P values of < 0.05 were considered statistically significant.

Results: Students born in June had significantly higher spherical equivalents than schoolchildren born in May (0.66 ±1.17 and 0.39 ±1.17 respectively, p = 0.0058). The Mann–Whitney U-test showed that students born in June had significantly higher spherical equivalents than schoolchildren born in any other month (0.66 ±1.17 and 0.50 ±1.17 respectively, p = 0.0033). Besides that, we did not observe any other association between refractive errors and the month of birth.

Conclusion: Children born in Poland in June may have a higher spherical equivalent.

Keywords


month of birth; refractive errors; children; Poland

Full Text:

PDF

References


Quinn G.E., Shin C.H., Maguire M.G., Stone R.A.: Myopia and ambient lighting at night. Nature. 1999, 399 (6732), 113–114.

Chapell M., Sullivan B., Saridakis S., Costello L., Mazgajewski N., McGinley J. et al.: Myopia and night-time lighting during sleep in children and adults. Percept Mot Skills. 2001, 92, 640–642.

Czepita D., Gosławski W., Mojsa A.: Occurrence of refractive errors among students who before the age of two grew up under the influence of light emitted by incandescent or fluorescent lamps. Ann Acad Med Stetin. 2005, 51 (1), 33–36.

Czepita D., Gosławski W., Mojsa A., Muszyńska-Lachota I.: Role of light emitted by incandescent or fluorescent lamps in the development of myopia and astigmatism. Med Sci Monit. 2004, 10 (4), CR168–171.

Gwiazda J., Ong E., Held R., Thorn F.: Myopia in children is not associated with night-time lighting in infancy. In: Proceedings of the VIII International Conference on Myopia. Eds: F. Thorn, D. Troilo, J. Gwiazda. Conference on myopia 2000, Boston 2000, 308–312.

Mutti D.O., Jones L.A., Irvin B.C., Kleinstein R.N., Manny R.E., Shinny J.A. et al.: Nursery lighting is not associated with myopia. In: Proceedings of the VIII International Conference on Myopia. Eds: F. Thorn, D. Troilo, J. Gwiazda. Conference on myopia 2000, Boston 2000, 313–316.

Stone R.A., Wilson L.B., Ying G.S., Liu G.S., Criss J.S., Orlow J. et al.: Association between childhood refraction and parental smoking. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2006, 47 (10), 4277–4287.

Guggenheim J.A., Hill C., Yam T.F.: Myopia, genetics, and ambient lighting at night in a UK sample. Br J Ophthalmol. 2003, 87 (5), 580–582.

Saw S.M., Wu H.M., Hong C.Y., Chua W.H., Chia K.S., Tan D.: Myopia and night lighting in children in Singapore. Br J Ophthalmol. 2001, 85 (5), 527–528.

Saw S.M., Zhang M.Z., Hong R.Z., Fu Z.F., Pang M.H., Tan D.T.: Near-work activity, night-lights, and myopia in the Singapore-China study. Arch Ophthalmol. 2002, 120 (5), 620–627.

Sugimoto R., Kuwayama Y., Stone R.A.: Myopia and night-time light exposure in Japanese schoolchildren. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2001, Suppl., 42, S392.

Czepita D., Mojsa A., Czepita M., Lachowicz E.: Myopia and night lighting. Investigations on children with negative family history. Klin Oczna. 2012, 114 (1), 22–25.

Ma Q., Xu W., Zhou X., Cui C., Pan C.W.: The relationship of season of birth with refractive error in very young children in eastern China. PLOS ONE 2014, 9 (6), e100472, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0100472.

Vannas A.E., Ying G.S., Stone R.A., Maguire M.G., Jormanainen V., Tervo T. et al.: Myopia and natural lighting extremes: risk factors in Finnish army conscripts. Acta Ophthalmol Scand. 2003, 81 (6), 588–595.

Mandel Y., Grotto I., El-Yaniv R., Belkin M., Israeli E., Polat U. et al.: Season oh birth, natural light, and myopia. Ophthalmology. 2008, 115, 686–692.

McMahon G., Zayats T., Chen Y.P., Prashar A., Williams C., Guggenheim J.A.: Season of birth, daylight hours at birth, and high myopia. Ophthalmology. 2009, 116 (3), 468–473.

Pearce E., Dunbar R.: Latitudinal variation in light levels drives human visual system size. Biol Lett. 2012, 8 (1), 90–93.

Deng L., Gwiazda J.: Birth season, photoperiod, and infancy refraction. Optom Vis Sci. 2011, 88 (3), 383–387.

Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. 2015; www.dwd.de/mittelwerte (2.04.2015)

Zadnik K., Mutti D.O., Adams A.J.: The repeatability of measurement of the ocular components. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 1992, 33 (7), 2325–2333.

Czepita D.: Myopia – incidence, pathogenesis, management and new possibilities of treatment. Russ Ophthalmol J. 2014, 7, 96–101.

Stone R.A., Pardue M.T., Iuvone P.M., Khurana T.S.: Pharmacology of myopia and potential role for intrinsic retinal circadian rhythms. Exp Eye Res. 2013, 114, 35–47.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.21164/pomjlifesci.68

Copyright (c) 2015

License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/pl/