Abstract
Objective
To assess the odds of reporting low back pain (LBP) as related to systemic inflammation
and obesity.
Design
Cross-sectional analysis of the 1999 to 2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination
Survey (NHANES).
Setting
National database analysis.
Participants
Population-based sample of 15,322 participants in the 1999 to 2004 NHANES databases.
Interventions
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures
Systemic inflammation was measured by C-reactive protein (CRP) and fibrinogen. Obesity
was quantified by body mass index and waist circumference (WC). LBP was identified
by self-report. Analysis included logistic regression to assess the odds of reporting
LBP as related to systemic inflammation and obesity.
Results
It was hypothesized that obesity and systemic inflammation would increase the odds
of reporting LBP. Participants with elevated CRP (>3.0mg/dL) had 1.74 (95% confidence
interval [CI], 1.04–2.91) greater odds of reporting LBP. Those who were obese (≥30kg/m2) with elevated CRP had 2.87 (95% CI, 1.18–6.96) greater odds of reporting LBP than
those without elevated CRP. When using WC as the measure of obesity, participants
with high WC values had significantly greater odds of reporting LBP (odds ratio=2.39;
95% CI, 1.09–5.21).
Conclusions
To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that high levels of CRP may increase
the odds of reporting LBP, especially in those who are obese. These findings warrant
further investigation of the interrelations among obesity, systemic inflammation,
and LBP.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
BMI (body mass index), CI (confidence interval), CRP (C-reactive protein), LBP (low back pain), NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey), NW (normative weight), OB (obese), OR (odds ratio), OW (overweight), UW (underweight), WC (waist circumference)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 26, 2012
Footnotes
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.
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© 2013 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
