Employees of the Chinese University of Hong Kong report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that regular instillation of 0.05% atropine in children's eyes inhibits the development of myopia. Atropine is part of the well-known eye drops that relax the muscles of the eye, so that the pupil dilates and the lens cannot accommodate. Atropine drops are used both for the diagnosis and treatment of certain eye diseases. The experiment involved 353 children from 4 to 9 years old, who were divided into three groups: one was dripped with atropine with a concentration of 0.05% at night, another with atropine with a concentration of 0.01%, and the third was dripped with placebo. Neither the parents nor the experimenters themselves knew which drops each particular child received; it turned out only when calculating the results.
The experiment lasted two years, and in the end it turned out that in the 0.05% atropine group, only about a quarter of the children had myopia (at least in one eye). And among those who were given 0.01% atropine and placebo, half of them had myopia in two years. In fact, in some Asian countries, atropine drops are used to slow down the development of myopia when it has already manifested. Now the researchers wanted to check whether atropine can slow down its very appearance — judging by the results, apparently, it is possible.
However, the mechanism of the antimiopathic effect of atropine is unknown, and, as can be seen from the figures, it did not work on all children. In addition, the experiment was staged after all with a not very large group of experimental volunteers, and it did not last very long. The authors of the work therefore say that atropine only delays the onset of myopia, and does not prevent it — in order to judge the prevention, such a study should last not two years, but longer, up to the full maturity of children. The probability of myopia depends on genes, and on how much time a child spends reading, and on how exactly he reads, and on other factors. In order to take into account as many such factors as possible, many children should participate in a long—term experiment with atropine - more than several hundred.
