HealthDay 
(4/20, Doheny) reported, “Young children who spend too much time watching TV or playing computer games have narrower eye arteries than kids who are more physically active,” according to a study published online in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association. “Narrower arteries are a marker of future cardiovascular risk, and the narrower the vessels, the higher the risk,” according to the researchers.
WebMD (4/20, Boyles) reported that “the study included close to 1,500 6- and 7-year-olds living in Sydney, Australia. The children’s parents completed questionnaires designed to assess how much time the kids spent watching TV or using other electronic equipment and how much time they spent engaging in physical pursuits.” In addition, “digital photographs were taken in the back of each child’s eyes to determine the width of the retinal blood vessels.”
HeartWire (4/20, Miller) reported, “The children’s exercise and sports activities as well as their TV, computer, and video-game habits were recorded in questionnaires filled out by their parents.” The researchers found that “after adjustment for age, sex, ethnicity, eye color, axial length, body-mass index, birth weight, and mean arterial blood pressure, the retinal arteriolar caliber in children who were in the highest tertile of outdoor sporting activities was an average of 2.2 µm wider than those of the children in the lowest tertile of outdoor physical activity (p for trend=0.004). Each increasing quartile of time spent watching TV, playing video games, or using the computer was associated with narrower mean retinal arteriolar caliber of about 2.3 µm (p for trend=0.003).”
