Colour blindness more prevalent in Caucasian boys

Wednesday, April 16 2014 | 00 h 00 min | News

A US study shows that young Caucasian boys are at the highest risk of being colour blind.

Researchers from the Multi-Ethnic Pediatric Eye Disease Study Group tested 4,005 California children between three and six years of age. For girls, the rate of prevalence ranged from 0% to 0.5%, which is too low to compare rates among ethnic groups.

However, among the boys, the study findings highlighted certain trends. The researchers found the following prevalence by ethnicity for boys:

• 5.6% of Caucasians;
• 3.1% of Asians;
• 2.6% of Hispanics;
• 1.4% of African-Americans.

According to the researchers, this shows the importance of screening children early on for this vision deficiency. It is all the more important because it can have a negative impact on a child’s school performance and ability to learn. An early diagnosis will help them benefit from appropriate learning strategies and tools.

The study findings were published in the journal Ophthalmology.

Sources:

http://www.aaojournal.org/article/S0161-6420(14)00049-9/abstract

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140403084243.htm