A study published recently in the Journal of General Internal Medicine may provide some insight into why chronic low back pain may be difficult to treat.

Data published from the PRECISION Pain Research Registry, which looked at 289 chronic low back pain patients over a 1-year period, demonstrated that pain intensity, physical function and five quality-of-life measures remained generally stable regardless of patient characteristics and the treatments they used.

According to John Licciardone, DO, MS, MBA, a regents professor in family medicine at the UNT Health Science Center who leads the research registry study team, when monitoring three key outcomes related to chronic low back pain, there were no significant changes over four different time points during a 1-year period. The outcomes used were pain intensity, measured on a scale of 0-10; physical function, which asks patients to rate how chronic low back pain affects several aspects of daily living and their ability to work; and five quality-of-life indicators including sleep disturbance, pain interference with activities, anxiety, depression and low energy/fatigue, a media release from the Osteopathic Research Center, University of North Texas Health Science Center.

“We know that people suffer from chronic low back pain for years,” Licciardone explains, “but what was surprising looking at these data, was just how stable the outcomes were for these 289 patients across a 1-year period. The outcomes they reported didn’t change over four quarterly time points in that year regardless of their demographic characteristics and the various treatments they used, including prescription medications.”

Licciardone adds that these data are based on the patients’ real-world experience with chronic low pain as the research registry does not provide any diagnostic testing or treatment, but rather, uses information collected from patients as a way to monitor and assess the treatments currently being used by people with chronic low back pain in an effort to develop more effective ways to treat the condition in the future.

Participants in the study ware 54 years old, on average, and 72% were women, 32% reported identifying with a race other than white, 13% were Hispanic, 47% reported a history of depression, 37% reported that they were unable to do their usual work for 1 month or longer because of their low back pain, 35% reported that they currently used opioids to treat their low back pain, and 15% reported previous low back pain surgery to treat their pain.

The PRECISION Pain Research Registry was created to study a wide range factors related to chronic low back pain including the treatments that patients use to manage their low back pain, as well as the impact chronic low back pain has on their daily lives. The effectiveness of these treatments is measured by how they improve people’s ability to complete day-to-day tasks, a wide range of quality-of-life and psychological indicators, and side effects potentially related to the treatments used, per the release.

[Source(s): Osteopathic Research Center, University of North Texas Health Science Center, Newswise]