Visual Impairment in White, Chinese, Black, and Hispanic Participants from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis Cohort

Abstract

Purpose: To describe the prevalence of visual impairment and examine its association with demographic, socioeconomic, and health characteristics in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) cohort.

Methods: Visual acuity data were obtained from 6134 participants, aged 46–87 years at time of examination between 2002 and 2004 (mean age 64 years, 47.6% male), from six communities in the United States. Visual impairment was defined as presenting visual acuity 20/50 or worse in the better-seeing eye. Risk factors were included in multivariable logistic regression models to determine their impact on visual impairment for men and women in each racial/ethnic group.

Results: Among all participants, 6.6% (n = 421) had visual impairment, including 5.6% of men (n = 178) and 7.5% of women (n = 243). Prevalence of impairment ranged from 4.2% (n = 52) and 6.0% (n = 77) in white men and women, respectively, to 7.6% (n = 37) and 11.6% (n = 44) in Chinese men and women, respectively. Older age was significantly associated with visual impairment in both men and women, particularly in those with lower socioeconomic status, but the effects of increasing age were more pronounced in men. Two-thirds of participants already wore distance correction, and not unexpectedly, a lower prevalence of visual impairment was seen in this group; however, 2.4% of men and 3.5% of women with current distance correction had correctable visual impairment, most notably among seniors.

Conclusion: Even in the U.S. where prevalence of refractive correction is high, both visual impairment and uncorrected refractive error represent current public health challenges.

• Multi-ethnic
• prevalence
• risk factors
• uncorrected refractive error
• visual impairment

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors acknowledge the contributions of our recently deceased colleague, Dr Mohammed F. Saad, who would have been a co-author on this manuscript. Additionally, we thank the other investigators, the staff, and the participants of the MESA study for their valuable contributions. A full list of participating MESA investigators and institutions can be found at http://www.mesa-nhlbi.org.

DECLARATION OF INTEREST

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.

This research was supported by contracts N01-HC-95159, N01-HC-95160, N01-HC-95161, N01-HC-95162, N01-HC-95163, N01-HC-95164, N01-HC-95165, N01-HC-95167, N01-HC-95168, and N01-HC-95169 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and by grants UL1-RR-024156 and UL1-RR-025005 from NCRR. Additional support was provided by National Institute of Health (NIH) grant HL69979-03 (Klein R, Wong TY) and the Intramural Research Program at the National Eye Institute (ZIAEY000403).

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

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