New research suggests lower back pain caused more cases of disability globally than any other condition.
Researchers expect the numbers to grow even more as the world population increases and there are more elderly, a British Medical Journal (BMJ) news release reported.
The researchers looked at 117 published studies to determine the "prevalence, incidence, remission, duration, and risk of death" associated with back pain, the news release reported.
The research encompassed 47 countries and included surveys in five countries that focused on severe acute and chronic back pain without leg pain. The team then measured the disability caused by back pain in relation to disability adjusted life years (DALYs). In DALYs the researchers combine the number of years lost as a result of early death and factor them in with the years spent living with a disability.
"Out of all 291 conditions studied in the Global Burden of Disease 2010 study, low back pain came top of the league table in terms of years lost to disability, and sixth in terms of DALYs," the news release reported.
Lower back pain was ranked "the greatest contributor of disability" in a whopping 12 out of 22 of the world's regions.
The team determined that about one in 10 people suffer from lower back pain (9.4 percent). The number of DALYs was found to have risen from 58.2 million in 1990 to 83 million in 2010.West Europe was found to have the highest rates of lower back pain, with North Africa and the Middle East close behind. The lowest rates of lower back pain were found in the Caribbean and Latin America.
"With [aging] populations throughout the world, but especially in low and middle income countries, the number of people living with low back pain will increase substantially over coming decades," the researchers said, the news release reported. "Governments, health service and research providers and donors need to pay far greater attention to the burden that low back pain causes than what they had done previously."
