Researchers conclude that people suffering from chronic dry eye diseases are most likely to have slow reading rate.
A chronic dry eye is a common disease in which natural water in the eyes fail to lubricate the eyes, affecting the function of the eye senses and researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine found out its relevance to a person's reading rate.
The study, which was published online on November 15, in Optometry and Vision Science, found out that the condition slows down the person's reading speed by as much as 10 percent and can even make it difficult for them to read. Moreover, people with a clinically significant dry eye can only read fewer words per minute or 32 words per minute less than those without suffering from the condition, who read at the same rate at 272 words per minute.
"Many of my patients have perfect vision on standard eye tests but complain they cannot drive at nighttime or in unfamiliar areas, read small print or do computer work," lead investigator Esen Akpek, M.D., Bendann Family Professor of Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute said, adding that dry eye affects millions of adults, primarily people age 50 and older causing visual problems.
"We suspected that people with dry eye were mostly unable to sustain good reading performance because their tears cannot re-lubricate their eye surfaces fast enough," she added.
In order to prove and test this, "Akpek and her team recruited the 186 participants from the Ocular Surface Disease and Dry Eye Clinic at the Wilmer Eye Institute. All participants were age 50 or older, and had not used prescription or over the counter eyedrops in the 24 hours before testing. The group had a mean age of 63.2, 116 participants had a clinically significant dry eye, 39 reported dry eye symptoms but did not have clinical findings, and 31 participants without dry eye acted as controls. Of the participants, 131 with dry eye and 23 control participants were women."
The participants also answered the Ocular Surface Disease Index questionnaire, which is about eye discomfort, vision quality and eye complaints.
Akpek said that it can be very complicated to treat a dry eye. She added that the most effective treatments are those tailored to the underlying causes of their dry eyes, patient's activities and the severity of the tear deficiency.
In the future, Akpek said that she would like to repeat the similar experiments in younger people to test how dry eyes could be affecting learning and work productivity.
