An Exploration of the Relationship Between Back Muscle Endurance and Familial, Physical, Lifestyle, and Psychosocial Factors in Adolescents and Young Adults

Abstract

Low back pain (LBP) is currently the most prevalent and costly musculoskeletal pain disorder, with increasing incidence throughout adolescence. 59 Adolescent LBP has also been linked to LBP in adulthood. 6 Therefore, clinical strategies have been investigated to prevent and rehabilitate LBP, including addressing back muscle endurance (BME). This previous research has identified that BME, as determined by the Beiring-Sorenson test, is predictive of LBP in specific populations, 3,31 and that reduced BME is a characteristic of some adult and adolescent populations with LBP. 1,23,37 Improving BME has, therefore, become a common focus for the prevention and rehabilitation of LBP in sporting groups, manual workers, and the general population, 42,44,50 with some evidence in sporting populations that BME improvements are associated with a reduced incidence of LBP. 44,50 However, there is little understanding of the association between factors (particularly, familial factors) believed to be predictive of BME performance in adolescents and young adults.A number of individual factors have been shown to be associated with BME. Body mass index (BMI) is frequently reported to be associated with BME in both adult 25,28,33,34 and adolescent 54 T T STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional investigation. T T OBJECTIVE:To explore the relationship between back muscle endurance (BME) and a range of familial, physical, lifestyle, and psychosocial variables in adolescents and young adults. T T BACKGROUND:There is evidence that low back pain interventions which focus on improved BME are effective. However, the mechanisms associated with BME performance in adolescents and young adults are largely unclear. In particular, the potential familial relationship between parents and their children remains unexplored. T T METHODS:This study utilized a subset of participants from the Joondalup Spinal Health Study cohort. One hundred nine children (47 boys, 62 girls) and 101 parents (39 fathers, 62 mothers) completed a series of physical, lifestyle, and psychosocial assessments. The univariable relationship between each covariate and BME was explored. Those found to have an association with child BME (P<.2) were included in an initial multivariable model and sequentially removed, until all remaining covariates were statistically significant (P<.05). T T RESULTS:Mothers' BME performance was related to children's performance, accounting for 14.4% of the variance in the children's BME. Fathers' BME performance had a similar, albeit nonsignificant effect. Children's sitting trunk angle, pain sensitivity, percent trunk fat, waist girth, and body mass index were associated with their BME performance, accounting for between 5.2% and 20.9% of BME. T T CONCLUSIONS:The final multivariable model, including mother's BME, percent trunk fat, and sitting trunk angle, explained 28% of the variance in BME performance, suggesting that for successful BME intervention a range of multidimensional variables should be considered.

Comparative Study of Abdominal Muscle Thickness on Ultrasonography in Healthy Adolescents and Patients With Low Back Pain

“…In a study conducted by Campbell et al, the results demonstrated that a significant correlation was found between spinal muscle activity and the percentage of fat tissue. They concluded that the percentage of fat tissue was a strong predictive index . Some mechanisms for this conclusion were individual deconditioning and an increased body mass index.…”

Screen-based media use clusters are related to other activity behaviours and health indicators in adolescents

“…The test has moderate construct validity, with fatigue the most common reason reported for test termination [36]. The test required participants to lie prone, with their lower body supported on a plinth, and hold their trunk level with their lower body for as long as possible [37]. …”

Investigation of Spinal Posture Signatures and Ground Reaction Forces During Landing in Elite Female Gymnasts

“…In contrast, a growing body of research has linked static and dynamic nonneutral spinal postures with LBP, including populations of adolescents , adults (Dankaerts et al, 2009), adolescent rowers (Ng et al, 2008), and cyclists (Burnett et al, 2004). Furthermore, there is evidence that adopting end-range sagittal plane spinal positions results in reduced activity of the lumbopelvic stabilizing muscles, and is associated with poorer back muscle endurance (Campbell et al, 2011), therefore potentially increasing risk of lumbar spine injury under load (Cholewicki et al, 2005;Dankaerts et al, 2006;Mitchell et al, 2008). To date, no research has investigated the proximity of gymnasts landing postures to their end-range lumbar spine position.…”