A research showed that Chinese adolescents affected by myopia disease, or short-sightedness, tend to be younger and younger, China News Service reported yesterday.

China now has 5 million blinded people and 6 million people with low vision. The number of children who have slanting eyes or poor vision reaches 10 million. About 40 percent of adolescents in China are short-sighted. In college, such ratio is as high as 70 percent.

There is a remarkable increase for the number of short-sighted children aged 7-9. Many children become short-sighted at their school age or even earlier. In China, about 70 percent of adolescents become short-sighted during puberty, the second most in world.

Experts said that there are many factors that contribute to short-sightednesss among adolescents at an earlier age. Besides heredity factors, the disease is mostly linked with children's too much involvement in various pre-school classes, playing computer games, watching televisions and films. A higher living standard and adolescents' physical development at an earlier age also contribute to the disease.

(China News Service March 3, 2006)