Study finds atropine use in childhood increases adult choroidal thickness

A new study published in Asia-Pacific Journal of Ophthalmology has explored the relationship between short term atropine use in childhood and choroidal thickness as an adult.

An international team of researchers used swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT) to measure choroidal thickness among 229 study participants.

Among the 422 eyes examined in the study, 94 had received no previous atropine treatment, while 328 had received between two and four years of topical atropine treatment during childhood.

Using atropine as a child was associated with a choroid that was on average 20–40 microns thicker in adulthood, after adjusting for age, sex, and axial length.

The researchers also found that increased choroidal thickness was correlated with a reduced incidence of a tessellated fundus in early adulthood.

“While it remains unclear whether this association indicates a causal relationship or is influenced by confounding factors, the findings further support the potential long-term benefits of topically applied atropine eye drops for the treatment of childhood myopia,” the authors observed.

The researchers highlighted that recent advancements in swept-source OCT have significantly improved the visualisation of choroidal layers.

“To our knowledge, our study is the first to describe the association between childhood atropine treatment and choroidal thickness in early adulthood utilising the ATLAS cohort, which followed subjects for 10–20 years after cessation of myopia control,” they shared.