Patients with chronic neck pain demonstrate increased mortality risk in osteoarthritis
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Key takeaways:
- In patients with osteoarthritis, chronic neck pain was linked to a greater risk for mortality.
- The results demonstrate a need to screen patients with neck pain for osteoarthritis, the researchers wrote.
Patients with osteoarthritis who experience neck pain lasting longer than 1 year have a significant increased risk for all-cause mortality, according to data published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.
“There are few studies that focus on the relationship between spinal factors and OA in the elderly,” Xi Chen, MD, of the Peking University Fourth School of Clinical Medicine, in Beijing, China, and colleagues wrote. “Furthermore, to our knowledge, there is no previous study that investigated the association between neck pain (NP) and OA, and how it affected the mortality of OA patients.”
To investigate the relationship between neck pain and OA, Chen and colleagues conducted a cohort study using data collected as part of the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2009 to 2010. Patients were excluded if they were aged younger than 20 years or had missing data regarding BMI, demographics or disease activity.
Patients’ OA status was determined using self-reported interview information conducted at enrollment. The researchers collected neck pain data from the Arthritis Questionnaire Section of the survey. Patients were assessed during a physical evaluation to determine the extent of OA and neck pain, while mortality data were collected from the NHANES public-use mortality file.
Among the 5,965 participants included in the analysis, 8.18% had OA, while 5.92% reported having neck pain to some degree. According to the researchers, neck pain was associated with OA after adjusting for demographic and lifestyle factors (HR = 2.519; 95% CI, 1.325-4.788). Meanwhile, in patients with OA, neck pain lasting longer than 1 year was “significantly associated” with a higher risk for all-cause mortality, both before (HR = 2.94; 1.61-5.37) after (HR = 3.3; 95% CI, 1.23-45.85) adjusting for demographic and lifestyle factors, the researchers wrote.
“Our study revealed a strong association between neck pain and osteoarthritis,” Chen and colleagues wrote. “In particular, chronic neck pain over 1 year will increase the mortality of OA patients.”
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