The Genetics of Myopia 5 Milly S. Tedja, Annechien E. G. Haarman, Magda A. Meester-Smoor, Virginie J. M. Verhoeven, Caroline C. W. Klaver, and Stuart MacGregor Key Points • While the recent global rise of myopia prevalence is primarily attributable to environmental changes, within populations inherited factors play a large role in explaining why some individuals are affected by myopia while oth- ers are not. • Early efforts to identify the specific genes underlying the heritability of refractive error used linkage and candidate gene designs to identify up to 50 loci and genes, although most remain unconfirmed. M. S. Tedja · A. E. G. Haarman · M. A. Meester-Smoor Department of Ophthalmology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands V. J. M. Verhoeven Department of Ophthalmology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Department of Clinical Genetics, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands C. C. W. Klaver Department of Ophthalmology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Department of Ophthalmology, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands S. MacGregor (*) Statistical Genetics, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail:
[email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 95 M. Ang, T. Y. Wong (eds.), Updates on Myopia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8491-2_5 96 M. S. Tedja et al. • As the sample size in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) has increased, the number of implicated loci has risen steadily, with 161 vari- ants reported in the latest meta-analysis.