Studying may increase the risk of nearsightedness according to a German study. The study found that the more years of education a person had, the more likely they were to be nearsighted, with 60.3% of those who attended 13 years of the German secondary school system being nearsighted compared to only 26.9% of those without a diploma. University graduates also had higher rates of nearsightedness than vocational school graduates or those without further training. The lead author concluded that environmental factors like education have a much greater impact on developing nearsightedness than genetic factors.

1. Studying May Make You
Nearsighted
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
JULY 7, 2014
Can too much studying ruin your
eyesight? Maybe. A German study has
found that the more education a
person has, the greater the likelihood
that he will be nearsighted.
The researchers did ophthalmological
and physical examinations on 4,685
people ages 35 to 74. About 38
percent were nearsighted. But of
those who graduated after 13 years in the three-tiered German secondary
school system, about 60.3 percent were nearsighted, compared with 41.6
percent of those who graduated after 10 years, 27.2 percent of those who
graduated after nine years and 26.9 percent of those who never graduated.
The percentage of myopic people was also higher among university
graduates than among graduates of vocational schools or those who had no
professional training at all. The study was published online in
Ophthalmology.
The association remained after adjusting for age, gender and many known
myopia-associated variations in DNA sequences.
“The effect on myopia of the genetic variations is much less than the effect of
education,” said the lead author, Dr. Alireza Mirshahi, an ophthalmologist at
the University Medical Center in Mainz. “We used to think that myopia was
predetermined by genetics. This is one proof that environmental factors have
a much higher effect than we thought.”