MEC ImpactReport 2024 flipBook v1.0 single pages - Flipbook - Page 13
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Professor Omar Mahroo, professor of retinal neuroscience at the UCL Institute
of Ophthalmology and consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields
Taking a long-term approach
to short-sightedness
Short-sightedness (or myopia) causes significant vision
impairment worldwide, and can increase the risk of
developing other sight-threatening complications. It
already affects 30% of people worldwide, and is becoming
dramatically more common with forecasts estimating
half the world will be affected by 2050 - but we don’t yet
understand why.
30%
of the world is
currently myopic
To unpick this, researchers
This means an ERG can
have begun to make use
potentially detect problems
of a technique called
much sooner than the
an electroretinogram
more widely used imaging
(ERG). Much like an ECG
techniques (which usually
(electrocardiogram) tracks
only show where cells have
electrical signals in the
died) and can also be used
heart, an ERG analyses the
for studying conditions like
electrical signals in the retina
short-sightedness where we
to help us understand how
think that altered electrical
the cells in our eye are
signals in the retina might
responding to light.
be important.
[2]
50%
By 2050, almost 50%
will be myopic 5 billion people
[2]
