Blue-yellow deficiencies in young moderate smokers

To evaluate whether tobacco affects color vision in young moderate smokers.

Chromatic mechanisms of 13 moderate smokers (10-20 cigarettes/day and at least 5 years smoking) and 17 non-smokers in the 18-35 age range were assessed with the Farnsworth-Munsell 100-hue (FM100h) test and short wavelength automated perimetry (SWAP).

FM100h Total Error Scores (TES) were higher for smokers, and although differences were not significant (p = 0.14), a linear model with principal component analysis was able to explain 95% of the variance in TES and red-green partial error scores, though not in blue-yellow partial error scores (p = 0.07), using the number of years as smokers and the number of cigarettes/day as predictors. SWAP sensitivity values were globally worse (p = 0.002) for smokers (25.7 + 6.2 dB) than for non-smokers (26.7 + 6.2 dB). In the upper visual hemifield sensitivity, total deviation and pattern deviation values were worse for smokers (p < 0.001). Differences in mean defect and pattern standard deviation were not significant (p > 0.05 in both cases). The number of out-of-limits points in the total difference and pattern difference map were significantly larger for smokers. After correcting for multiple comparisons, only the differences in the upper visual hemifield were significant.

This pilot study suggests that even young moderate smokers show small sensitivity loss in the blue-yellow mechanism, it is statistically significant, restricted to the upper visual hemifield. This corresponds to a retinal region where literature reports a lower density of retinal ganglion cells and where, therefore, the chromatic mechanisms would be more fragile.