Publication date: Feb 2022
What is already known about this subject:
- Spinal (back or neck) pain in adolescence is common and often associated with an impact on adolescents’ lives.
- Although understanding risk factors is critical for developing treatments for spinal pain, current findings are inconsistent and links between risk factors and spinal pain in adolescents are poorly understood. This is particularly the case for adolescent spinal pain with impacts such as time off school and medication use. Previous reviews of the current scientific knowledge in this area suggest that psychological problems have a stronger influence on pain rather than other factors. The reviews also highlighted an important gap in knowledge due to the lack of studies following people from childhood through to adolescence.
- We aimed to investigate if experiencing psychological problems in early childhood increases the risk of significant neck or back pain in adolescence.
What this study adds
- 1175 adolescents from a prospective cohort study (Gen2 Raine Study) were included. Psychological problems were assessed at ages 2, 5, 8 and 10 using Child Behaviour Check List (CBCL). Spinal pain, including low back, mid back, or neck/shoulder, was measured at age 17. We were interested in adolescent spinal pain that was significant (i.e. resulted in impacts of care seeking, medication use, missing school, interfering with daily activity or leisure activity) and defined cases as people with spinal pain with impact (one or more) or greater impact (two or more) impacts.
- Adolescent spinal pain with impact and greater impact were 49% and 14%, respectively. Psychological problems in childhood increased the odds of adolescent spinal pain with impact by 33%.
- Psychological problems in childhood increase the risk of significant spinal pain with impact in adolescence, and may be a promising prevention target.