The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Global Prevalence of Myopia and High Myopia and Temporal Trends from 2000 through 2050
Open accessAbstract
PURPOSE: Myopia is a common cause of vision loss, with uncorrected myopia the leading cause of distance vision impairment globally. Individual studies show variations in the prevalence of myopia and high myopia between regions and ethnic groups, and there continues to be uncertainty regarding increasing prevalence of myopia. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis. METHODS: We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the prevalence of myopia and high myopia and estimated temporal trends from 2000 to 2050 using data published since 1995. The primary data were gathered into 5-year age groups from 0 to ≥100, in urban or rural populations in each country, standardized to definitions of myopia of -0.50 diopter (D) or less and of high myopia of -5.00 D or less, projected to the year 2010, then meta-analyzed within Global Burden of Disease (GBD) regions. Any urban or rural age group that lacked data in a GBD region took data from the most similar region. The prevalence data were combined with urbanization data and population data from United Nations Population Department (UNPD) to estimate the prevalence of myopia and high myopia in each country of the world. These estimates were combined with myopia change estimates over time derived from regression analysis of published evidence to project to each decade from 2000 through 2050. RESULTS: We included data from 145 studies covering 2.1 million participants. We estimated 1406 million people with myopia (22.9% of the world population; 95% confidence interval [CI], 932-1932 million [15.2%-31.5%]) and 163 million people with high myopia (2.7% of the world population; 95% CI, 86-387 million [1.4%-6.3%]) in 2000. We predict by 2050 there will be 4758 million people with myopia (49.8% of the world population; 3620-6056 million [95% CI, 43.4%-55.7%]) and 938 million people with high myopia (9.8% of the world population; 479-2104 million [95% CI, 5.7%-19.4%]). CONCLUSIONS: Myopia and high myopia estimates from 2000 to 2050 suggest significant increases in prevalences globally, with implications for planning services, including managing and preventing myopia-related ocular complications and vision loss among almost 1 billion people with high myopia.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 23
- Bourne, 2013, Causes of vision loss worldwide, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis, The Lancet Global Health, 1, e339, 10.1016/S2214-109X(13)70113-X · DOI · Paper page
- Smith, 2009, Potential lost productivity resulting from the global burden of uncorrected refractive error, Bull World Health Org, 87, 431, 10.2471/BLT.08.055673 · DOI · Paper page
- Fricke, 2012, Global cost of correcting vision impairment from uncorrected refractive error, Bull World Health Org, 90, 728, 10.2471/BLT.12.104034 · DOI · Paper page
- Wong, 2014, Epidemiology and disease burden of pathologic myopia and myopic choroidal neovascularization: an evidence-based systematic review, Am J Ophthalmol, 157, 9, 10.1016/j.ajo.2013.08.010 · DOI · Paper page
- Iwase, 2006, Prevalence and causes of low vision and blindness in a Japanese adult population: the Tajimi study, Ophthalmology, 113, 1354, 10.1016/j.ophtha.2006.04.022 · DOI · Paper page
- Yamada, 2010, Prevalence of visual impairment in the adult Japanese population by cause and severity and future projections, Ophthal Epidemiol, 17, 50, 10.3109/09286580903450346 · DOI · Paper page
- Rose, 2008, Myopia, lifestyle, and schooling in students of Chinese ethnicity in Singapore and Sydney, Arch Ophthalmol, 126, 527, 10.1001/archopht.126.4.527 · DOI · Paper page
- Pan, 2015, The age-specific prevalence of myopia in Asia: a meta-analysis, Optom Vis Sci, 92, 258, 10.1097/OPX.0000000000000516 · DOI · Paper page
- He, 2007, Refractive error and visual impairment in school children in rural southern China, Ophthalmology, 114, 374, 10.1016/j.ophtha.2006.08.020 · DOI · Paper page
- Zhou, 2015, Factors underlying different myopia prevalence between middle- and low-income provinces in China, Ophthalmology, 122, 1060, 10.1016/j.ophtha.2014.12.019 · DOI
- Vitale, 2009, Increased prevalence of myopia in the United States between 1971–1972 and 1999–2004, Arch Ophthalmol, 127, 1632, 10.1001/archophthalmol.2009.303 · DOI · Paper page
- Lin, 2004, Prevalence of myopia in Taiwanese schoolchildren: 1983 to 2000, Ann Acad Med Singapore, 33, 27, 10.47102/https://doi.org/10.47102/annals-acadmedsg.V33N1p27 · doi:10.47102/https://doi.org/10.47102/annals-acadmedsg.v33n1p27 · Paper page
- Wang, 2008, Changes of the ocular refraction among freshmen in National Taiwan University between 1988 and 2005, Eye, 23, 1168, 10.1038/eye.2008.184 · doi:10.1038/eye.2008.184
- Bar Dayan, 2005, The changing prevalence of myopia in young adults: a 13-year series of population-based prevalence surveys, Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci, 46, 2760, 10.1167/iovs.04-0260 · DOI
- Matsumura, 1999, Prevalence of myopia and refractive changes in students from 3 to 17 years of age, Surv Ophthalmol, 44, S109, 10.1016/S0039-6257(99)00094-6 · DOI
- Koh, 2014, Differences in Prevalence of Refractive Errors in Young Asian Males in Singapore between 1996–1997 and 2009–2010, Ophthalmic Epidemiology, 0, 1
- Morgan, 2012, Myopia, Lancet, 379, 1739, 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60272-4 · DOI · Paper page
- Lim, 2014, Impact of parental history of myopia on the development of myopia in mainland China school-aged children, Ophthalmol Eye Dis, 6, 31, 10.4137/OED.S16031 · doi:10.4137/oed.s16031
- Read, 2014, Light exposure and physical activity in myopic and emmetropic children, Optom Vis Sci, 91, 330, 10.1097/OPX.0000000000000160 · DOI · Paper page
- Smith, 2014, Visual regulation of refractive development: insights from animal studies, Eye (London), 28, 180, 10.1038/eye.2013.277 · DOI
- Lim, 2010, Dietary factors, myopia, and axial dimensions in children, Ophthalmology, 117, 993, 10.1016/j.ophtha.2009.10.003 · DOI
- Wu, 2015, Prevalence and associated factors of myopia in high-school students in Beijing, PloS One, 10, e0120764, 10.1371/journal.pone.0120764 · DOI · Paper page
- Hashemi, 2014, Prevalence of refractive errors among high school students in western Iran, J Ophthal Vis Res, 9, 232
Cited by
Vos, T., Abajobir, A. A., Abate, K. H., Abbafati, C., Abbas, K. M., Abd-Allah, F., Abdulkader, R. S., Abdulle, A. M., Abebo, T. A., Abera, S. F., et al. (2017) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(17)32154-2 · Cited by 13,220
Self-citationThe Lancet Global Health Commission on Global Eye Health: vision beyond 2020
Burton, M. J., Ramke, J., Marques, A. P., Bourne, R. R. A., Congdon, N., Jones, I., Ah Tong, B. A. M., Arunga, S., Bachani, D., Bascaran, C., et al. (2021) · The Lancet Global Health · doi:10.1016/s2214-109x(20)30488-5 · Cited by 1,624
Self-citationJonas, J. B., Aung, T., Bourne, R. R., Bron, A. M., Ritch, R., & Panda-Jonas, S. (2017) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(17)31469-1 · Cited by 1,322
Myopia Prevention and Outdoor Light Intensity in a School-Based Cluster Randomized Trial
Wu, P.-C., Chen, C.-T., Lin, K.-K., Sun, C.-C., Kuo, C.-N., Huang, H.-M., Poon, Y.-C., Yang, M.-L., Chen, C.-Y., Huang, J.-C., et al. (2018) · Ophthalmology · doi:10.1016/j.ophtha.2017.12.011 · Cited by 574
IMI – Report on Experimental Models of Emmetropization and Myopia
Troilo, D., Smith, E. L., Nickla, D. L., Ashby, R., Tkatchenko, A. V., Ostrin, L. A., Gawne, T. J., Pardue, M. T., Summers, J. A., Kee, C.-S., et al. (2019) · Investigative Opthalmology & Visual Science · doi:10.1167/iovs.18-25967 · Cited by 487
Metadata
- Authors
- Holden, B. A., Fricke, T. R., Wilson, D. A., Jong, M., Naidoo, K. S., Sankaridurg, P., Wong, T. Y., Naduvilath, T. J., & Resnikoff, S.
- Venue
- Ophthalmology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-05
- Volume
- 123
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1036-1042
- ISSN
- 0161-6420 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2263495255
- Cited by
- 5,500
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 161.64
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (vor)
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Global Prevalence of Myopia and High Myopia and Temporal Trends from 2000 through 2050. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.ophtha.2016.01.006
- The paper
- Holden, B. A., Fricke, T. R., Wilson, D. A., Jong, M., Naidoo, K. S., Sankaridurg, P., Wong, T. Y., Naduvilath, T. J., & Resnikoff, S. (2016). Global Prevalence of Myopia and High Myopia and Temporal Trends from 2000 through 2050. Ophthalmology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ophtha.2016.01.006
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
