Does this appear blurry? If so, you're not alone.
Fifty percent of Americans 20 and older are thought to have a vision problem, most commonly myopia (nearsightedness) or astigmatism (blurred vision), researchers at the National Eye Institute reported Monday in the Archives of Ophthalmology.
For the study, researchers analyzed 1999-2004 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey on 12,000 people.
More than 33 percent were nearsighted and 36 percent had astigmatism, researchers said.
The prevalence of nearsightedness was higher than the 25 percent found in previous U.S. studies, researchers said.
Women were more likely to be nearsighted than men, 39.9 percent compared to 32.6 percent. Nearsightedness also is more common in whites (35.2 percent) than in blacks (28.6 percent) or Mexican-Americans (25.1 percent), the study found. People 60 and older were more likely to have astigmatism than to be nearsighted.
Click here to read more on this study published in the Archives of Ophthalmology.
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