Original articleDry Eye in the Beaver Dam Offspring Study: Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Health-Related Quality of Life
Section snippets
Methods
The Beaver Dam Offspring Study (BOSS) is an ongoing cohort study of aging in the adult children of the population-based Epidemiology of Hearing Loss Study (EHLS). Baseline examinations of BOSS participants (n = 3285), aged 21-84 years, took place between 2005 and 2008. Information on symptoms of dry eye was provided by 3275 participants. The BOSS was approved by the Health Sciences Institutional Review Board of the University of Wisconsin, all participants provided written informed consent, and
Prevalence
The mean age of the 3275 participants was 49 years (range 21-84 years), 1789 participants (54.6%) were female, and 2271 (69.3%) had higher than a high school education (Table 1). The prevalence of dry eye symptoms was 14.5% overall (14.1% in those aged 21-49 years, 15.2% in those 50 and older) and was significantly higher in women than in men (17.9% vs 10.5%, P < .0001). Although a slight increase in prevalence of dry eye symptoms was observed by age, this trend for the population overall did
Discussion
Few studies have investigated the prevalence of and risk factors for dry eye among adults younger than 50 years of age. In the BOSS cohort, which includes young adults, dry eye symptoms were relatively common and had a significant impact on health-related quality of life. Prevalence in the BOSS was 14.1% among those aged 21-49 years, 15.2% among those 50 years of age and older, and 14.5% overall. The overall estimate falls in the range of the prevalence rates reported in previous studies.3, 9
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