A recent UCL study reveals that children with amblyopia, commonly known as lazy eye, face heightened risks of hypertension, obesity, and metabolic syndrome in adulthood, along with an elevated likelihood of heart attacks.
In a publication in clinical medicine, the study's authors emphasise that while they have identified a correlation, their research does not establish a causal relationship between amblyopia and adult health issues. The researchers examined data from over 126,000 participants aged 40 to 69 in the UK Biobank cohort, all of whom underwent ocular examinations.
Among the 3,238 participants who reported experiencing lazy eye during childhood, 82.2 percent continued to have reduced vision in one eye as adults. The study revealed that individuals with childhood amblyopia had a 29 percent higher likelihood of developing diabetes, 25 percent higher likelihood of hypertension, and 16 percent higher likelihood of obesity.
Moreover, individuals with childhood amblyopia were at a heightened risk of heart attacks, even after adjusting for other risk factors such as additional diseases, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. This elevated risk of health complications was observed not only in participants whose vision problems persisted into adulthood but also to some degree in those who had experienced amblyopia as children but had 20/20 vision as adults, although the correlation was less pronounced in the latter group.
