Drs Pradeep Suri and Patrick Heagerty of UW Biostatistics, along with a research group from King's College London, received the 2024 Outstanding Paper Award from The Spine Journal and the North American Spine Society. Their manuscript, "The association of lumbar intervertebral disc degeneration with low back pain is modified by underlying genetic propensity to pain," is online now.
This study analyzed data from the UK Biobank and the TwinsUK cohort. Researchers found that a polygenic risk score for chronic pain divided patients into subgroups. In some subgroups, there was a strong and statistically significant link between MRI-detected lumbar intervertebral disc degeneration (LDD) and low back pain (LBP). In other subgroups, the link was weak or non-significant. The authors concluded that genetic predisposition to chronic pain affects the LDD-LBP association, with the strongest link in those with the highest genetic risk. This suggests that lumbar MRI findings may be more relevant to LBP in certain subgroups.