Being born in the summer increases your chance of being short sighted

Researchers discover correlation between birth month and
short-sightedness
Planning for a summer delivery for your child? You might want to
choose
an ophthalmologist along with an obstetrician.
If your child is born in the winter or fall, it will have better
long-range eyesight throughout its lifetime and less chance of
requiring
thick corrective glasses, predicts a Tel Aviv University investigation
led by Dr. Yossi Mandel, a senior ophthalmologist in the Israel
Defense
Forces Medical Corps.

Forming a large multi-center Israeli team, the scientists took data on
Israeli youth aged 16-23 and retroactively correlated the incidence of
myopia (short-sightedness) with their month of birth. The results were
astonishing. Babies born in June and July had a 24% greater chance of
becoming severely myopic than those born in December and January -
the group with the least number of severely myopic individuals. The
investigators say that this evidence is likely applicable to babies
born
anywhere in the world.

The results of the study were published this month in the clinical eye
journal Ophthalmology. The team interpolated data from a sample size
of
almost 300,000 young adults, making it one of the largest
epidemiological surveys carried out in the world on any subject.

Is this great disparity in eyesight related to one's luck or
astrological sign? "Nonsense," balks study co-author Prof.
Michael Belkin of Tel Aviv University's Goldschleger Eye Research
Institute, the most prominent eye research organization in Israel and
the region. Belkin is also Incumbent to the Fox Chair of Ophthalmology
and one of the founders and first director of the Goldschleger
Institute, established more than 25 years ago at the Sheba Medical
Center. In November Prof. Belkin will attend the annual American
Academy
of Ophthalmology conference in New Orleans, La.

"It is probably a long-term effect of early-life exposure to natural
light that increases the chances of a child becoming short-sighted,"
he says. "I am speaking about those people who would have to wear
very thick glasses, if they did not use contact lenses or laser
surgery
for the removal of spectacles."

A more thorough laboratory analysis of myopia in young chickens
suggested that the body has a mechanism that causes the eyeball to
lengthen (short-sighted eyes are longer than normal) when it is
exposed
to prolonged illumination. This mechanism is associated with
melatonin,
a pigment secreted by the pineal gland, though scientists are not sure
exactly how it operates. This is the same gland that sets our body's
internal clock or permits it to participate in "Circadian
rhythms."

"We know that sunlight affects the pineal gland and we have
indications that melatonin, through other compounds, is involved in
regulating eye length," says Belkin. "More sun equals less
melatonin, equals a longer eye which is short sighted."

Belkin doesn't identify any evolutionary benefit for extreme myopia
in summer babies. "People with longer eyes who lived in the period
prior to the invention of eyeglasses were severely disadvantaged and
restricted to a few professions or doomed to death." Nowadays,
however, shortsightedness has its advantages, Belkin says, pointing
out
a strong correlation between myopia and intelligence.

Belkin scientifically demonstrated this correlation 20 years ago.
"It is not a myth at all that people who wear pop-bottle glasses are
smarter. They tend to be," he argues.

Though involved in this recent research regarding myopia, Belkin's
main research subject is lasers and their application for curing eye
disease. "I am studying the effects of lasers on eyes: How to
prevent accidental injuries and how to develop lasers for treatment of
eye diseases such as glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration -
the
leading causes of blindness."

Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University
http://www.physorg.com/news107357743.html

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