A review of atropine for the treatment of myopia

Recently, the incidence of myopia has been rising year by year among adolescents with a trend toward younger children. At present, some methods used in treating and controlling myopia are eyeglass spectacles, orthokeratology lenses, drugs, etc. Among these methods, the effect of atropine in high concentrations (1%, 0.5% and 0.1%) can effectively reduce the refractive error and axial length elongation of myopia. However, there are some side effects from its pharmacological activity, such as photophobia and near vision blur, etc. But these side effects are not present in low concentrations (0.01%). This paper presents a simple summary of the use of atropine for the cure and control of myopia. Key words: Atropine; Myopia; Treatment outcome; Side effect