Study suggests education causes short-sightedness

The more time a person spends in education the more likely they are to develop short-sightedness, reveals a study led by Cardiff University and the University of Bristol. The research, which provides new evidence that time spent in education is a causal risk factor for short-sightedness (myopia), reveals that for every additional year spent in education, there is an increase in myopic refractive error of 0.27 dioptres. This suggests that a UK university graduate with 17 years in education would, on average, be one dioptre more myopic than an individual who left school at 16 with 12 years of education. This difference in myopia severity is enough to blur vision for driving below legal standards. Myopia, or short-sight, is one of leading causes of visual disability in the world. The global prevalence is rising rapidly and has reached epidemic levels in parts of East and Southeast Asia. For more than a century, observational studies have reported links between education and myopia, but whether time spent in education causes myopia has been uncertain.