Taking a long-term approach to short-sightedness 

To unpick this, researchers have begun to make use of a technique called an electroretinogram (ERG). Much like an ECG (electrocardiogram) tracks electrical signals in the heart, an ERG analyses the electrical signals in the retina to help us understand how the cells in our eye are responding to light.

This means an ERG can potentially detect problems much sooner than the more widely used imaging techniques (which usually only show where cells have died) and can also be used for studying conditions like short-sightedness where we think that altered electrical signals in the retina might be important.

Professor Omar Mahroo, professor of retinal neuroscience at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields, was granted a PhD studentship to explore whether ERGs could help us understand both normal and abnormal retinal function.

PhD student Xiaofan Jiang discovered that one of the common genetic risk factors most strongly associated with short-sightedness changes the electrical signals generated by nerve cells in the retina in response to light, and that this could play a role in the eye changing shape. Their work was published in ​‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA’.

This is the first discovery of how a common genetic myopia risk factor alters the retina. It’s an important step in understanding how myopia develops, and highlights how the ERG can be used in new ways to answer important questions related to vision.

Building on this work, Professor Mahroo’s team are now looking at ERGs to explore other genetic risk factors for myopia, and are developing patient-friendly testing protocols using portable devices that could increase accessibility to ERGs.

This work will help further our understanding of myopia, allowing the development of interventions that could help prevent it, and of other eye diseases that affect the retina - such as age-related macular degeneration and inherited retinal disease, which are two of the biggest causes of blindness in the UK.