Research progress of visual plasticity related factors and environment effecting amblyopia treatment

• Main Authors: Bo Li, Long Li, Yun-Chun Zou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Press of International Journal of Ophthalmology (IJO PRESS) 2018-10-01
• Series: Guoji Yanke Zazhi
• Subjects: amblyopia; vision; plasticity; related factors; environment
• Online Access: http://ies.ijo.cn/cn_publish/2018/10/201810015.pdf

Amblyopia is the most common cause of poor monocular vision in children. The prevalence of world population is 1%-5% and in China is about 2%-4% with yearly growth trend. Amblyopia mainly occurs in the sensitive period of children's visual development, because the visual development during this period has plasticity that susceptible to a variety of factors, which can lead to different developmental trajectories of visual system. As the age increases, visual plasticity disappears, so the therapeutic effect of amblyopia is insignificant at this moment. Therefore, it's a golden period for amblyopia treatment when the visual system remains plasticity. In recent years, there has been a large number of studies on visual plasticity with the expectation of making full use of this feature to reverse the development of amblyopia.It is known that visual plasticity is affected by many factors such as nerve factors and living environment.This article will start with excitatory neurological factors, brain-derived growth factors, inhibitory neurological factors and environmental influences to summarize current research progress in visual plasticity.