Half of world population to turn short-sighted in 30 years
Posted on: 19/Feb/2016 2:26:01 PM
If the trend keeps continuing, about half of the total population in the world will become short sighted in another three decades. And about one fifth of them will have the likeliness of turning blind, claims a new study.
Between 2000 and 2015, this increase will be seven fold. In spite of this prevalent state, there is no clear understanding of its cause even to the scientists. It is very easy for us to blame our obsession for computer screens called myopia epidemic.
In the US and few parts of Asia the total cases of myopia has almost doubled between 1970 and 2000. There is another fact that almost 96 percent of South Korean teenagers are short sighted. The rate in Singapore, China and Japan is 80 to 90 percent. A new research is conducted by international team of researchers to analyze the increase in myopia cases in the past few decades and they have come up with predicting the future.
There were 145 studies covering 2.1 million participants. Here, it was found that there were 1406 cases of myopia in 2000 which accounted to 22.9 percent of total population in the world. There were 163 million people with high myopia which is associated with high risk of blindness and cataracts. There will be about 4758 million myopia victims and 938 million individuals with high myopia, states a journal ophthalmology.
What`s happening?
This issue has largely raised in the recent years. On assessing, it is clear that the reason for the condition is changes in lifestyle and behavior that have taken place in the past few decades. Researchers state this to be environmental factors, mainly lifestyle changes where there is less time spent outdoors and increased work activities, and there are several other factors.
