Prevalence and Patterns of Refractive Errors in Children and Young Adults in an Urban Region in South India: the Hyderabad Eye Study

Purpose To determine the prevalence of refractive error (RE) and associated risk factors for myopic refractive errors in children and young adults from the urban region of Hyderabad, South India.Methods Four thousand sixty-five (4,065) participants aged 6–22 years were enrolled and examined in this cross-sectional study conducted from October 2013 to January 2015. Participants were enrolled from a random sample of schools and universities in regions representative of urban Hyderabad. RE was determined using cycloplegic autorefraction. The association of demographic factors such as age, gender, and socio-economic category (SEC) (low/mid/high) with myopia was explored with logistic regression with robust standard error.Results Of the total participants, 2,259 were children aged 6–15 years and 1,806 were adolescents and young adults aged 16–22 years. Overall prevalence of myopia, high myopia (≤ −5.00D and ≤ −6.00 D), hyperopia, emmetropia, and astigmatism was 29.8% (95% CI: 26.0% to 33.6%, n = 1,216), 2.9% (95% CI: 1.9% to 3.9%, n = 120), 1.1% (95%CI: 0.7% to 1.5%, n = 46), 14.7% (95% CI: 12.4% to 17.0%, n = 599), 46.9% (95% CI: 43.7% to 50.1%, n = 1913) and 8.6% (95% CI: 7.4% to 9.9%, n = 352) respectively. A strong correlation existed between age and prevalence of myopia (R2 = 0.88, p < .001) and high myopia (R2 = 0.71, p < .001). Children from schools of low SEC (34.7%) had higher prevalence of myopia compared to the mid SEC (16.8%) (p = .043).Conclusion Myopia was the most prevalent refractive error and increased with age in this urban population. More myopia was observed in schools of low SEC.