The relationship between physical performance and vision may be an accompanying relationship

Dear Editor,

We were pleased to read the study by Wu K¹, and colleagues in which they found that physical exercise might help improve visual acuity. University students should practice strength exercises to improve physical performance. I think this view needs to be discussed further. We will add some of our points.

First, the relationship between physical performance and vision may be an accompanying relationship, not a cause-effect relationship. Indeed, eye exercises can effectively prevent myopia. But we can’t say that there is a causal relationship between sports performance and vision. There are many reasons for good physical performance, such as long-term exercise, personal physical fitness, and so on. Good eyesight may be caused by less usage of eyes, or it may be due to better preventive measures. The causal relationship between physical activity and vision needs to be further confirmed by a queue study.

Additionally, the authors studied the correlation between physical performance and vision, but did not take into account the confounding factor. Age and gender tend to modify the correlation between physical performance and vision. The authors also did not give the general demographic characteristics of the subjects, such as age, gender, education level and economic level. Only by presenting more baseline data can we better explore the relationship between physical performance and vision.

REFERENCE

• ¹
  Wu K, Yang L, Sun X, He L, Du T. Physical performance is associated with visual acuity in university students: results of a school-based study. Rev Assoc Med Bras. 2020;66(3):296-9. https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9282.66.3.296
  » https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9282.66.3.296

• Funding: none

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  15 Oct 2021
• Date of issue
  June 2021

History

• Received
  13 Feb 2021
• Accepted
  14 Mar 2021