Aspherical lenslet spectacles cut myopia progression by 71% in US children over two years

The edition in brief

Five findings for ophthalmologists and those who screen for eye disease. A double-masked trial at nine US sites randomised 159 myopic children aged 6-12 to spectacle lenses with highly aspherical lenslets or single-vision lenses; at 24 months refraction progressed by 0.25 D versus 0.90 D (a 71% reduction) and axial length by 0.21 versus 0.45 mm, without safety concerns. A prospective study at three tertiary centres in Central and Western India recorded 67 firecracker eye injuries over two Diwali seasons: 63% in children, a third in bystanders, over 40% presenting worse than 6/60 and 24% needing surgery. A meta-analysis of 834,814 intravitreal anti-VEGF injections put rhegmatogenous retinal detachment at 0.012% per injection (1 in 8,675) and 0.08% per eye. A meta-analysis of 16 studies of 1.79 million people found SGLT2 inhibitors associated with less diabetic retinopathy progression (RR 0.77) and macular oedema (RR 0.75) than other glucose-lowering drugs. In a TriNetX cohort of people with mild or moderate non-proliferative retinopathy, fenofibrate use was associated with lower odds of vision-threatening retinopathy (OR 0.53) and macular oedema (OR 0.32).