Osteoporosis and non specific chronic low back pain: Correlation with sex and severity of backache

Abstract

More than 80% of adults have Low Back Pain (LBP) at some time in their life. Most of the time, the exact cause of the pain cannot be found and this is called as nonspecific LBP. Relationship between OP and nonspecific chronic LBP are not clear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between OP and non specific chronic LBP and correlation with sex and severity of backache. One hundred patients with non specific chronic LBP and another 100 control persons without LBP were studied by DEXA and lumbosacral MRI. By DEXA 28 (28.0%) of patients and 15 (15.0%) of control having OP but by MRI 21 (21.0%) of patients and 10 (10.0%) of control having signs of OP, with significant difference between both groups (p-value 0.025 and 0.032, respectively). No significant difference between OP and severity of backache (p-value 0.146) was observed. As regard to sex 30 (69.77%) from the cases that having OP were females, while 13 (30.23%) from this cases were males with significant difference between them (p-value = 0.081). The OP is a considerable finding in non specific chronic LBP, accounting (28.0%). Most cases with OP were females and no significant difference between OP and severity of backache was found. So, it was recommended that every case of non specific chronic LBP to be evaluated by DEXA.