Manual labour ups carpal tunnel syndrome risk

Higher manual workload and lower educational level are strong predictors of clinically relevant carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), a recent study has found.

Drawing from the Healthcare Register of Skane, in Southwestern Sweden, the researchers conducted a general-population study of 5,456 individuals aged 17–57 years who had been diagnosed with CTS for the first time between 2004 and 2008. Each patient was matched with four non-CTS referents, for a total of 21,667 matched controls. Analysis was primarily stratified according to sex.

Among women with CTS, 52 percent were blue-collar workers as opposed to only 40 percent in the non-CTS general population referents (p<0.001). Similarly, men with CTS were more likely to have blue-collar jobs than referents (65 percent vs 46 percent).

Moreover, patterns of manual work likewise differed significantly between CTS patients and referents. In women, for example, patients were less commonly engaged in light manual work than controls (35.3 percent vs 44.6 percent) and more frequently involved in heavy manual work (5.6 percent vs 4.2 percent). A similar trend was reported for men (light: 19.9 percent vs 33.9 percent; heavy: 47.7 percent vs 30.8 percent).

Conditional logistic regression confirmed that blue-collar workers are at greater risk of CTS (odds ratio [OR], 1.67, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.54–1.81), as were those who were engaged in heavy manual labour (vs light manual work: OR, 1.96, 95 percent CI, 1.75–2.20). In contrast, high-level educational attainment significantly protected against CTS (OR, 0.48, 95 percent CI, 0.44–0.53).