Clinical characteristics of Japanese children with optic neuritis.

The clinical characteristics of children with optic neuritis have been reported to be different from that of adults and to vary among different races. To determine the clinical characteristics of Japanese children with optic neuritis, we examined the medical records of 41 children who were diagnosed with optic neuritis at the Department of Ophthalmology of Chiba University Hospital between January 1979 and December 2001. Information on the sex, age of onset, laterality, initial visual acuity, final visual acuity, recent infections and immunizations, and presence of systemic neurologic diseases, such as multiple sclerosis or acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, was obtained. These findings revealed that the clinical features of optic neuritis in children were similar to those reported earlier. The percentage of optic neuritis cases that developed multiple sclerosis in children was similar to that for children in Europe and North America, and this percentage was not lower than that in adults in our clinic. These findings can be taken as the characteristics of optic neuritis of children in Japan.