Impact of Carpet Weaving on Refractive Errors

Purpose: to determine the effect of carpet weaving on refractive errorsmethods: in this cross sectional study, carpet weavers and non-weavers in the normal population of mashhad were regarded as exposed and non-exposed groups, respectively. a carpet weaver was a person who wove carpets 7 hours a day for at least 2 years. the non-weavers group was selected from the population of mashhad through stratified cluster sampling. the variables of age, gender, education, with respect to their frequency, were matched between the two groups.results: in this study, 266 carpet weavers (exposed individuals) and 549 non-weavers group (non-exposed individuals) were evaluated. the prevalence of myopia was 78.9% in carpet weavers and 19.0% in non-weavers [odds ratio (or)=16.03, 95% confidence interval (ci)=11.13-23.09]. the prevalence of hyperopia was 6.02% in carpet weavers, and 56.75% in non-weaver group (or=0.05, p<0.001). the prevalence of astigmatism was 39.47% in carpet weavers and 21.46% in non-weavers. the odds of against-the-rule (atr) astigmatism was 1.72 times more in carpet weavers as compared to non-weavers (p<0.001).conclusion: the results of this study showed that carpet weaving had a strong correlation with myopia. in addition to myopia, the prevalence of astigmatism, specially atr astigmatism, was higher in carpet weavers