Comparison of refractive components in youth-onset and early adult-onset myopia.

Refraction and its components were measured for 79 young adults, 29 of whom were youth-onset myopes, 26 were early adult-onset myopes, and 24 were emmetropes. By submitting the data to analysis of variance, it was found that: (1) corneal power was significantly greater for both groups of myopes than for the emmetropes; (2) lens power and thickness were not significantly different for the three groups of subjects; (3) anterior chamber depth was significantly greater for the youth-onset myopes than for the emmetropes; and (4) vitreous chamber depth and axial length were both significantly greater for youth-onset myopes than for early adult-onset myopes, and significantly greater for young adult-onset myopes than for emmetropes. When youth-onset myopes and early adult-onset myopes were matched on the basis of spherical equivalent refraction, no significant differences were found between the two groups for any of the components of refraction. It was concluded that the differences between youth-onset myopes and early adult-onset myopes found in the analysis of variance occurred only as a result of the fact that the youth-onset myopes had been myopic for longer periods of time and therefore were considerably more myopic.