This study found that dry eye patients experienced an improvement in symptoms after 45 days to three months of oral omega-3 fatty acid supplementation. Photo: Getty Images. Click image to enlarge.

There are currently no clinical guidelines regarding treatment for computer vision syndrome; however, a number of options are directly marketed to patients. When assessing the efficacy and safety of these interventions, researchers uncovered no high certainty evidence supporting the use of various therapies, such as blue-light glasses and oral berry extract.

The study authors identified eligible randomized controlled trials, which were then appraised for risk of bias and synthesized. They assessed the certainty of the body of evidence and used standardized mean differences when differently scaled measures were combined.

The analysis included 45 randomized controlled trials with a total of 4,497 participants. Data revealed that multifocal lenses did not improve visual fatigue scores when compared with single-vision lenses. Additionally, there was no reduction in visual fatigue symptoms with blue-blocking glasses. Oral berry extract supplementation for four to 12 weeks did not improve visual fatigue and dry eye symptoms vs. placebo. The study authors also reported that this supplement had no impact on critical flicker-fusion frequency or accommodative amplitude.

The researchers observed an improvement in dry eye symptoms with oral omega-3 fatty acid supplementation for 45 days to three months. The data also showed that oral carotenoid supplementation improved flicker-fusion frequency relative to placebo; however, the clinical significance of this is unclear.

“This review identified substantial inter-study variations in methodology and outcome measure selection,” the study authors wrote. “These findings indicate there would be benefit in developing a core outcome set for computer vision syndrome trials to standardize reporting in future studies and thus enable enhanced data synthesis in systematic reviews and meta-analyses; this would enable a clearer determination of the relative efficacy and safety of interventions to better inform clinical practice.”

Singh S, McGuinness MB, Anderson AJ, et al. Interventions for the management of computer vision syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Ophthalmology. May 18, 2022. [Epub ahead of print].