Twins to assist new study into low back pain
More than 300 twins are to help researchers at St Thomas’s Hospital in London find out more about the causes of long-term low back pain.
A team from the Twin Research Unit led by Dr Frances Williams have been awarded two years funding from of almost £192,000 from the Arthritis Research Campaign to investigate long-term lumbar disc disease, also known as osteoarthritis of the spine.
Despite being a common cause of low back pain, surprisingly little is known about it or how it progresses.
Earlier research on the same twins ten years ago by the team at St Thomas’s showed that inherited genes play a major role in the onset of lumbar disc disease – more than 70 per cent. Other risk factors including so-called environmental factors such as obesity, lack of exercise, occupation, lifting or smoking seem to play a much smaller role.
Now the team plan to find out if genetic factors also play a part in the progression of disc degeneration, ten years on.
“We plan the first comprehensive follow-up study of lumbar disc disease involving 326 twins whose initial scan was ten years ago,” explained Dr Williams, a senior research fellow and honorary consultant rheumatologist. “We will re-scan these twins to determine whether progression of lumbar disc disease is inexorable or whether, in fact, some abnormalities observed previously have improved or disappeared altogether.”
Lumbar disc degeneration occurs because of changes in the invertebral discs in the lumbar region of the spine, usually as a result of general stresses and strains over the years, rather than as a result of acute injury. As part of the natural aging process, it does not necessarily lead to low back pain, and many people whose scans reveals degenerative changes experience no pain.
The new study aims to find out if people with more rapidly progressive lumbar disc disease have more severe back pain.
“In addition, because twins are the subjects in this study, we will be able to establish to what extent genetic factors are responsible for the progression of lumbar disc disease,” added Dr Williams.
