By 2050, about half of the world's population will suffer from myopia, and a fifth of the population will have a critical increase in the risk of blindness, scientists say. The study was published in the journal Ophthalmology.
According to the study, today in the world about 2 billion people suffer from myopia - myopia, by 2020 the number of nearsighted people will reach 2.6 billion, and by 2050 - about 5 billion. “We predict that by 2050 there will be 4.758 billion people (49, 9% of the world's population) suffer from myopia, and 938 million will have a high degree of myopia,”the study authors state. Scientists came to their conclusions after analyzing 145 studies that included 2.1 million participants, and assessing the dynamics of the growth in the number of myopic people. One of the previous studies of the spread of myopia, published in the journal Nature, showed that if 60 years ago 10–20% of Chinese suffered from myopia, now there are already 90% of them. In Seoul, 95.6% of 19-year-olds are nearsighted.
According to scientists, it is quite simple to delay the development of myopia - for this it is enough to spend a lot of time in bright daylight, on the street. Experts believe that the elongation of the eyeball, leading to myopia, causes a lack of dopamine - it is produced under the influence of daylight. Earlier, doctors calculated that in order to maintain good vision, a person needs to spend at least three hours a day under illumination of 10 thousand lux (brightness of sunlight), while the most powerful lighting achievable indoors usually does not exceed 5 thousand lux.