Myopia is a very common eyesight disorder in which the things that are near to the eye can be seen clearly as they are focused accurately but the ones that are far away appear to be vague. There has been a curiosity with respect to the role of specific genes and their association to this eye disorder therefore this study aims to examine it.

The study was carried on by using 2079 subjects with the following categories of myopia: 252 extreme myopia, 277 high myopia, 393 moderate myopia, 366 mild myopia and 791 non-myopic controls. Genotyping was performed by TaqMan assays.

The risk allele T of ZC3H11B SNP rs4373767 was significantly associated with high myopia (OR=1.39, p=0.007) and extreme myopia (OR=1.34, p=0.013) when compared with controls, whereas ZFHX1B rs13382811 (allele T, OR=1.33, p=0.018) and SNTB1 rs7839488 (allele G, OR=1.71, p=8.44E-05) were significantly associated with extreme myopia only. In contrast, there was no significant association of these SNPs with moderate or mild myopia.

The study provided evidence that ZC3H11B is a susceptibility gene for high and extreme myopia, and ZFHX1B and SNTB for extreme myopia in Chinese populations.These three genes were more likely to impose risks of progressing to high and extreme myopia.

Reference: https://bjo.bmj.com/content/104/10/1472?rss=1

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