Does Kinesiophobia Mediate the Relationship between Pain Intensity and Disability in Individuals with Chronic Low-Back Pain and Obesity?

Abstract

Individuals suffering from chronic low-back pain and obesity face severe physical and functional limitations. According to the fear-avoidance model, kinesiophobia might play a crucial role in the relationship between pain intensity and disability. Thus, the purpose of this study was to verify the role of kinesiophobia as a mediator in the association between pain intensity and disability in individuals with both chronic low-back pain and obesity. A total of 213 individuals with chronic low-back pain and obesity were included in the study. The level of kinesiophobia, pain intensity and disability were all assessed using self-reported questionnaires. We verified through a simple mediation analysis that kinesiophobia partially mediated the association between pain intensity and disability in our sample. According to our findings, we emphasize the crucial role of kinesiophobia as a psychological factor that should be addressed in chronic low-back pain rehabilitative protocols to reduce disability in individuals with obesity.

The Role of Pain Catastrophizing and Pain Acceptance in Performance-Based and Self-Reported Physical Functioning in Individuals with Fibromyalgia and Obesity

“…In addition, we focused only on two psychological factors. While both are important factors according to the pain literature, other psychological factors, such as kinesiophobia [ 31 ] or pain self-efficacy [ 133 ], might also play a role in physical functioning. Furthermore, while the self-report questionnaire used referred to a period in the past (e.g., the previous week), the performance-based measure was based on the present moment.…”

“…Consistent with this idea, efforts are being made to shift the focus of pain management from reducing pain to improving the quality of life [ 25 , 26 , 27 ]. As a consequence, modifiable psychological factors like pain-related cognitions and beliefs about experience of pain that partly explain individual differences in the adaptation to chronic pain, such as pain catastrophizing and pain acceptance, have gained ground in pain research in the past decades [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ].…”

“…The combination of both pain catastrophizing and pain acceptance might be important to consider in pain research. Previous studies have generally focused on the identification of psychological factors that have a negative impact on physical functioning in individuals with chronic pain [ 31 , 40 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 ]. However, in recent years, resilience factors have also gained ground in pain research [ 57 ].…”

Elevating Subjective Well-Being Through Physical Exercises: An Intervention Study

“…Specific clinical populations, such as those with obesity (Kim et al, 2017) or chronic pain (Dysvik et al, 2010;Geneen et al, 2017;Law and Sluka, 2017), may benefit from regular physical activity. This line of research is intriguing because it appears that people with specific health conditions have movement beliefs (Varallo et al, 2020(Varallo et al, , 2021a that may limit their willingness to engage in physical activity. We recommend to verify whether exposing people with these conditions to a physical activity intervention can change their beliefs about movement and improve their subjective well-being.…”

Study on Pain Catastrophizing From 2010 to 2020: A Bibliometric Analysis via CiteSpace

“…determinants of the pain experience in several chronic pain conditions (Innes, 2005;Quartana et al, 2009;Jensen et al, 2011;Giusti et al, 2020;Romeo et al, 2021). Several factors [e.g., kinesiophobia (Varallo et al, 2020(Varallo et al, , 2021a, pain acceptance (Esteve et al, 2007;Varallo et al, 2021b), pain vigilance (Roelofs et al, 2003)] have been identify as significant contributors to pain and disability, one of the most important is pain catastrophizing (Leung, 2012).…”