Association Between Serum Vitamin D Levels and Myopia in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2001–2006)

ABSTRACT

Purpose

To assess the relationship between serum vitamin D levels and myopia in people aged 12–50 years using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database.

Methods

Demographics, vision, and serum vitamin D levels from NHANES (2001–2006) were analyzed. Multivariate analyses were performed to examine the relationship between serum vitamin D levels and myopia while controlling for sex, age, ethnicity, education level, serum vitamin A, and poverty status. The main outcome was presence or absence of myopia, defined as a spherical equivalent of -1 diopters or more.

Results

Of the 11669 participants, 5,310 (45.5%) had myopia. The average serum vitamin D concentration was 61.6 ± 0.9 nmol/L for the myopic group and 63.1 ± 0.8 nmol/L for the non-myopic group (p = .01). After adjusting for all covariates, having higher serum vitamin D was associated with lower odds of having myopia (odds ratio 0.82 [0.74–0.92], p = .0007). In linear regression modeling that excluded hyperopes (spherical equivalent > +1 diopters), there was a positive relationship between spherical equivalent and serum vitamin D levels. Specifically, as serum vitamin D doubled, spherical equivalent increased by 0.17 (p = .02) indicating a positive dose–response relationship between vitamin D and myopia.  

Conclusions

Participants with myopia, on average, had lower serum concentrations of vitamin D compared to those without myopia. While further studies are needed to determine the mechanism, this study suggests that higher vitamin D levels are associated with lower incidence of myopia.

Keywords:

• Myopia
• vitamin D
• NHANES

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Louis Pasquale for his expertise. We would also like to thank Christian Porras for his expertise in data analysis in R.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

This submission has not been published anywhere previously and is not simultaneously being considered for any other publication.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.