Depression and Obesity Raise Risk of Low Back Pain

By Pat Anson, Editor

Depression, obesity, smoking, and alcohol use significantly raise the risk of having low back pain, according to a large new study presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

“The results were pretty surprising to us. We kind of expected to find a significant difference but not to that extent,” said lead study author and orthopedic surgeon Scott Shemory, MD.

Shemory and his colleagues at Summa Health and the Crystal Clinic Orthopedic Center in Akron, Ohio reviewed the health records of over 26 million patients from 13 health care systems in the U.S. Of those 26 million patients, 1.2 million were diagnosed with lower back pain.

Researchers then analyzed the records to see if the patients with low back pain had any of the four modifiable risk factors: obesity, depressive disorders, alcohol and tobacco use.

• 19.3% of low back pain patients were depressed
• 16.75% were obese with a body mass index (BMI) over 30
• 16.53% were nicotine dependent.
• 14.66% abused alcohol

The study did not address the “chicken and egg question” of which came first. Do depression and obesity cause low back pain, or does low back pain lead to depression, obesity and other risk factors?

“With our study there was no way to determine the cause and the effect or which came first because there was so much overlap,” Shemory told Pain News Network.

“Especially with alcohol abuse and depressive disorders. Anybody who’s got low back pain for years and years, I don’t think it would be surprising that they would have a higher chance of depression or alcohol abuse.”

Regardless of which came first, Shemory says patients should take steps to improve their health by eliminating risk factors that they can control.

“If a patient has any of these risk factors and has low back pain that doesn’t have a neurogenic cause, like a pinched nerve or something like that, I would be counseling them on trying to control these risk factors, not just for their general health but their back pain and livelihood as well,” he said.

According to the National Instituteof Neurological Disorders and Stroke, about 80 percent of adults experience low back pain at some point in their lives. It is the most common cause of job-related disability and a leading contributor to missed work days. One large survey found that over a quarter of adults reported having low back pain during the past 3 months.