Eye and Vision Signs in Hypermobility (hEDS)

How Common Are Eye Problems in EDS?

A 2025 study published in Eye analyzed de-identified medical records from a research platform covering over 99 million patients across 60 US healthcare organizations. It compared 76,526 patients with an EDS diagnosis (ages 0 to 61+) against the general population on the same platform, looking at ICD-10-coded ocular diagnoses.

Myopia and dry eye were both diagnosed more often in the EDS group than in the general population across the 0-60 age range studied. Because this study counted formal diagnosis codes in medical records rather than self-reported symptoms from a survey, the exact rates are lower than you would see in a patient survey (where people report symptoms whether or not they have sought a diagnosis), but the comparison between EDS and non-EDS patients within this same dataset is what matters here, and it favored EDS patients having more diagnosed eye problems.

Two Rare Eye Conditions With Dramatically Higher Odds in EDS

The most striking findings were not the common conditions but two much rarer ones. Angioid streaks (cracks in a membrane layer at the back of the eye, related to the same connective tissue that is affected elsewhere in EDS) showed a prevalence odds ratio of 18.72 in EDS patients compared to the general population - meaning they were found at nearly 19 times the rate. Idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH, a condition involving elevated pressure inside the skull that can cause headaches and vision problems) showed an odds ratio of 18.43.

Both of these are still individually rare conditions - an 18-fold increase in a rare condition is still a rare condition, not a common one. But a difference of that size, in a dataset this large, is not something to dismiss as noise. The study's own conclusion was direct: an EDS diagnosis may be worth a routine referral to ophthalmology, rather than only prompting an eye exam if symptoms are already severe.