Normal Axial Length Growth in Chinese vs European Children - an Insights from Study by Tideman et al., 2017
The study conducted by Tideman and colleagues in 2017 provides some significant insights into axial length growth in children of different ethnicities and genders. The following is a bit of an over-simplification of the result. (Will do a more detail analysis at later time)
Fastest Axial Length (AL) Growth Period: Age 6-9, across both European and Chinese ethnicities.
Annual AL Growth Rate by Ethnicity:
Chinese children: 0.42mm/year
European children: 0.25mm/year
AL Growth Rate by Gender (only applicable to Chinese children):
Boys: 0.44mm/year
Girls: 0.39mm/year
Longer Eyes, Faster Growth: In Chinese children, longer eye length at younger age correlates with faster AL growth. But not in European children
AL Growth Slowdown: Between ages 9-15, the AL growth rate slows significantly to less than 0.1mm/year in both Chinese and European children.
It is essential to note the data above are inclusive of all refractive status (i.e. the survey sample includes children that are emmetropic, hyperopic, and myopic)
Reference:
Tideman JWL, Polling JR, Vingerling JR, Jaddoe VWV, Williams C, Guggenheim JA, Klaver CCW (2017) Axial length growth and the risk of developing myopia in European children. Acta Ophthalmol.
Growth curves of myopia-related parameters to clinically monitor the refractive development in Chinese schoolchildren. Pablo Sanz Diez & Li-Hua Yang & Mei-Xia Lu & Siegfried Wahl & Arne Ohlendorf. Graefe's Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology (2019) 257:1045–1053
