Original scientific paper
Obesity and Low Back Pain
Abdulbari Bener
Rafie Alwash
Tariq Gaber
Gyorgy Lovasz
Abstract
Obesity and low back pain (LBP) are common health problems among patients attending
Primary Health Care (PHC) in general practice at the United Arab Emirates
(UAE). The objective of this study was to determine whether obesity is associated with
low back pain. A cross-sectional face-to-face interview questionnaire survey was conducted.
The questionnaire was a modified version of the Roland-Morris Scale for evaluating
back disability. The interviews were conducted in Arabic by qualified nurses. A
multi-stage stratified sample 1,103 UAE national aged 25–65 years, who attended PHC
clinics for any reason, were invited to participate but only 802 subjects were eligible to
be included for the statistical analysis. The data were analyzed using univariate and
multivariate statistical methods. Of the 802 subjects, 428 (53.4%) were males and 374
(46.6%) were females. The mean age of the males was 40.5 11.5 years and females was
38.2 10.5 years (p=0.004). The mean BMI of the males was 26.4 7.4 and females was
27.8 5.6 (p=0.002). The overall prevalence of LBP in the present study was 64.9% (95%
confidence interval, 61.0–68.8) and respectively, 56.1% in males and 73.8% in females.
The results revealed that there was association between BMI and some socio-demographic
variables with the respect of with low back pain. Back pain had more influence on
the life style habits on females than in males. Stepwise multiple regression analysis showed
that only age (p<0.0001), educational level (p=0.001), gender (p=0.002), place of living
(p=0.019), BMI (p<0.0001), and housing condition (p=0.02) had significant effect on the
presence of LBP in patients. The present study showed that obesity is moderately associated
with low back pain.
Keywords
obesity; body mass index; risk factors; quality of life; UAE
Hrčak ID:
28067
URI
Publication date:
16.6.2003.
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