Correlation of Body mass index with refractive errors

Abstract

Background: Body Mass Index (BMI) is a person’s weight in kilograms (or pounds) divided by the square of height in meters (or feet). Obesity affects a wide spectrum of age groups, from the young to the elderly, several eye diseases related to obesity like diabetic retinopathy, floppy eyelid syndrome, retinal vein occlusion, stroke-related vision loss and age-related macular degeneration.

Objective: the study aimed to find an association between the body mass index (BMI) and the refractive errors.

Methodology: a cross sectional study was designed to involve a representative sample from medical students in Al-kindy College of medicine from 8th of December 2021 to 10th of January 2022. Weight and height were measured.  BMI was estimated, their refractive error was assessed.

Results: A total of 400 students were participated, 191(47.8%) had refractive errors while 209 (52.2%) were emmetropic.  A 37.8% of the participants had BMI >25. A significant relationship between refractive errors and all BMI groups were found (p < 0.025). Compared to normal, overweight and obese: only the underweight group showed significant relationship with refractive errors separately P < 0.006.

Conclusion: while there was significant relationship between BMI and refractive errors, while the relationship between underweight and refractive errors was statistically significant. Otherwise, students who had high BMI (overweight and obese) were not at risk of being myopic.