The main reason such low odds ratios are not often found is that people are usually looking for risk factors, not protective factors.

Yes. A low odds ratios indicates that the factor under examination is associated with a decrease, rather than an increase of risk relating to your outcome measure. Any significant departure from an odds ratio of 1 is of interest in understanding a factor's impact on outcomes.

i agree with Anthony & Paul.

Can you please check the coding of variable? Sometime outcome code is1-yes & 2-no while case are labelled as 1 and control is 0.

I think the important point is p-vlaue or 95% CI. your study is to find risk factors among many variables. In this case, researchers generally just check which is the significant among them using simple-variate analysis. And then, next step such as multiple or multivariate analysis, to compare the variables that was already proven the statistical significant. 

If you are now on simple analysis, you just check p-value. If you are now on mutiple anlaysis, it need to show the OR's size. however, don't worry about that. because important thing is to identify the risk factors. 

The problem of coding 0/1 or 1/2 is depend on your setting in the program(SPSS, STATA, SAS etc). you don't want to get stress, just code 0/1 from the begnning.

Thank you all. Paul and Tony are right though, Often times we are concerned with risk factors rather than checking for protective effects of exposure variables in case-control studies. All comments are appreciated.

Low odds ratio - below 1 shws that this factor is not a risk factor or this factor has a protective effect. May be my paper " Central retinal vein occlusion risk profile: a case-control study" will be helpful.

Good luck