Spectacles can improve a baby's outlook

Babies as young as 9 months could benefit from wearing spectacles to correct their vision, scientists say.

Researchers from University College London, who have developed a device that takes pictures of babies' eyes to identify visual defects say correcting these can reduce the risk of later problems.

"There is a group of babies of around nine months of age who are long-sighted and they are most at risk of lazy eye or a squint or of an eye turning in," said Professor Jan Atkinson.

She said that a randomised controlled trial had shown that if the children wore spectacles in infancy they could expect a better visual outcome.

Squinting, crossed-eyes and lazy eye, when one eye does not work properly, are the most common visual problems in children.

Professor Atkinson and her colleagues said long-sightedness in infants should be corrected because it seemed to be correlated with the eye problems and development delays.

Short-sightedness is less common and does not cause a problem.

"We think that there is a link between their visual problems that show up in the first year of life and these normal delays in visual motor development and skills - things such as putting a letter in an envelope or walking along a straight line," she said.

When the scientists conducted large screening programmes using a device called a videorefractor on a large number of babies, they found that between 2 and 5 per cent of them could benefit from corrective spectacles.

The scientists have also conducted a large study of children who have suffered brain damage around the time of birth due to a lack of oxygen.

They used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), a scanning technique, to study their brains and visual development.

They discovered that the dorsal pathway or stream in the brain, which is used for action and motions, is more vulnerable in the children than the ventral pathway, which is linked to recognising objects and faces.

"It is particularly important in terms of thinking of treatment that we recognise that not all of the brain is as plastic and recoverable as other parts," Professor Atkinson told the British Association for the Advancement of Science conference.

The scientists have also discovered that children with Williams Syndrome, which causes them to have difficulty with tasks involving spatial relationships, show problems with the dorsal stream system.

Professor Atkinson said that many of the children who had extensive brain damage on the MRI images made a good recovery.

- REUTERS

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