Overweight children found at risk for back problems and disc abnormalities

A retrospective study of spinal MRIs performed on 188 adolescents with back pain identified a lumbar spine abnormality in 52.1% or 98 of the patients.

Most of the abnormalities detected by the researchers occurred within the discs of the children who were overweight.

“This is the first study to show an association between increased body mass index and disc abnormalities in children,” lead author Judah G. Burns, MD, a diagnostic neuroradiology fellow at The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York, said in a press release from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) .

Burns was scheduled to present the findings at the RNSA 2009 annual meeting on Dec. 2.

Low back complaints

Burns and colleagues studied adolescents, aged 12 to 20 years old, who complained of back pain and were subsequently imaged at the hospital over a 4-year period. They excluded anyone with trauma or other conditions that might predispose them to back pain.

Researchers were able to determine an age-adjusted body mass index (BMI) for 106 of 188 patients. Of that group, 54 adolescents had a BMI in the 75th percentile for their age and in 35 of them (68.5%) the spinal MRI was abnormal.

By comparison, 18 children (34.6%) with either normal or below normal BMI also had an abnormal spine MRI, according to the release.

BMI and disc disease

“We observed a trend toward increased spine abnormality with higher BMI,” Burns stated in the release.

According to Burns, data from his study may signal a significant public health problem given the health costs of back pain in the United States and the significant morbidity associated with back pain in adulthood.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the release show 18% of U.S. adolescents in the same age range as those studied are overweight. Adolescents with a BMI in the 85th percentile are usually classified as overweight or at risk of being overweight.

“In children, back pain is usually attributed to muscle spasm or sprain,” Burns stated in the release. “It is assumed that disc disease does not occur in children, but my experience says otherwise,” he noted.

Reference:
Burns JG, Erdfarb A, Schneider J, et al. Pediatric lumbar disc disease: MRI abnormalities in normal and overweight children. Presented at RSNA 2009 95th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting. Nov. 29-Dec. 4, 2009. Chicago.
The researchers do not have any direct financial interests in products or companies mentioned in this article.