Association between sleep duration and video display terminal vision syndrome

Objective To examine the association between sleep duration with video display terminal (VDT) vision syndrome.Methods A multi-stage stratified cluster sampling was conducted among 1 477 college students from 5 universities in Xi'an.Data on daily sleep duration, VDT vision syndrome and related visual problems.Relation between sleep duration and incidence of VDT vision syndrome was explored by using factor analysis and Wilcoxon rank sum test.Results Daily sleep duration ranged from 4.0 to 13.0 hours, with an average of (7.53±1.02) hours.About 13.4% of all participants reported sleep duration less than 6 hours.Factor analysis showed that shorter sleep duration associated with higher symptoms except for ocular symptoms.The visual symptoms differed among participants with different sleep duration (χ2= 26.094, P<0.01).Compared with those whose sleep duration higher than 8 hours and those between 7 to 8 hours, more visual symptoms were reported among students with sleep duration less than 6 hours (Z =-2.814, -4.944, P<0.01).No significant differences were found in psychopathological symptoms, musculoskeletal symptoms, ocular symptoms, gastrointestinal symptom and psychotic symptoms (P>0.05).Conclusion Shorter sleep duration is closely related with an elevated risk of adverse visual problems such as ghosting, blurred vision, and vision loss.Sufficient sleep might help reducing the risk for video display terminal vision syndrome.