Abstract
Blinding eye disease is a major threat to global public health, and adult women represent a significant portion of this population. This study aimed to characterize the prevalence and trends of blinding eye diseases and vision loss in women of childbearing age (WCBA) and Perimenopause (PMW), to provide important information for the future development of more effective preventive and interventional measures for eye diseases in women. In 2021, the global prevalence of BVL disease in WCBA and PMW was 333 million. Forty countries and regions have more than one million people with BVL disease in both WCBA and PMW. India, China, Brazil, and Indonesia are the top 4 countries with more than ten million people. The BAPC model predicts that there will be 800 million cases of BVL in WCBA and PMW worldwide by 2050. This study comprehensively analyzed global trends in the burden of BVL disease in WCBA and PMW between 1992 and 2021. The results show a significant increase in the prevalence and burden of BVL, particularly concentrated in older female populations.
Data availability
Data utilized in this study are derived from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 (GBD 2021) (https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-results/).
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Acknowledgements
The authors are deeply grateful to the generous contributors of the GBD database for their invaluable contribution to data.
Funding
This study was financially supported by grants from the National Clinical Key Specialty of Ophthalmology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82401261), the Scientific Research Program of FuRong Laboratory (No. 2024PT5107), the China National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (BX20230434), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No.2023M743952), and the Youth Science Foundation of Xiangya Hospital (No. 2023Q12).
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X.X. and R.R. conceptualized and reviewed the manuscript. Y.L. and Y.Z. wrote the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
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The Ethics Committee of Xiangya Hospital of Central South University determined that the study did not need approval because it used publicly available data.
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Liu, Y., Zeng, Y., Rong, R. et al. Global burden for blindness and vision loss among women of childbearing age and perimenopause: age-period-cohort analysis 2021. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-41588-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-41588-y
