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.