Southampton volunteers sought for major back pain study
More than 100 people in the Southampton area are to be recruited to take part in a major research project looking at the problem of low back pain.
Taxi drivers, factory workers and office staff will be asked to volunteer for the study, which will be led by Dean Phillips, lecturer in physiotherapy at the University of Southampton.
Mr Phillips, who is based at the School of Health Professions and Rehabilitation Sciences, has been awarded a two-year grant of £91,152 from medical research charity the Arthritis Research Campaign to carry out the project.
Low back pain is one of the costliest medical conditions in the UK. In 1995,40 per cent of the adult population suffered from low back pain, with an annual cost in 1998 of £1632m in direct health costs and £10668m in lost production and informal care.
Mr Phillips and his team will test out the hypothesis that people who have poor postural awareness - known as sensorimotor dysfunction - may be more predisposed to developing low back pain, than those people who have good postural awareness.
To test his hypothesis, he is recruiting volunteers from three different occupational groups; manual workers, bus and taxi drivers, and office workers. Twenty people with low back pain, and twenty healthy volunteers, will be recruited from each group.
"In patients with joint conditions such as knee pain, postural awareness and muscle weakness problems are evident, which may cause or exacerbate the condition," explained Mr Phillips.
"Whether these same problems also exist in the low back is unclear, but there are good theoretical reasons why it might, and indirect evidence suggests it does.
"It may also be caused or made worse by risk factors in people's occupations. This is what we hope to find out with this research project. It may be that exercises could then be developed to improve low back pain."
The Arthritis Research Campaign is the fifth biggest medical research charity in the UK, and the only one solely dedicated to finding the cause of and cure for arthritis, and all forms of rheumatic disease. It relies entirely in public donations to fund its extensive research programme.
