The DOI matches its Crossref record; 10 of the 10 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Global low back pain prevalence and years lived with disability from 1990 to 2017: estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is a common musculoskeletal problem globally. Updating the prevalence and burden of LBP is important for researchers and policy makers. This paper presents, compares and contextualizes the global prevalence and years lived with disability (YLDs) of LBP by age, sex and region, from 1990 to 2017. METHODS: Data were extracted from the GBD (the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study) 2017 Study. Age, sex and region-specific analyses were conducted to estimate the global prevalence and YLDs of LBP, with the uncertainty intervals (UIs). RESULTS: The age-standardized point prevalence of LBP was 8.20% (95% UI: 7.31-9.10%) in 1990 and decreased slightly to 7.50% (95% UI: 6.75-8.27%) in 2017. The prevalent numbers of people with LBP at any one point in time in 1990 was 377.5 million, and this increased to 577.0 million in 2017. Age-standardized prevalence of LBP was higher in females than males. LBP prevalence increased with age, and peaked around the ages of 80 to 89 years, and then decreased slightly. Global YLDs were 42.5 million (95% UI: 30.2 million-57.2 million) in 1990 and increased by 52.7% to 64.9 million (95% UI: 46.5 million-87.4 million) in 2017. YLDs were also higher in females than males and increased initially with age; they peaked at 35-39 years of age in 1990, before decreasing, whereas in 2017, they peaked at 45-49 years of age, before decreasing. Western Europe had the highest number of LBP YLDs. CONCLUSIONS: Globally, LBP is the leading global cause of YLDs. Greater attention is urgently needed to mitigate this increasing burden and the impact it is having on health and social systems.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Vos, T., Abajobir, A. A., Abate, K. H., Abbafati, C., Abbas, K. M., Abd-Allah, F., Abdulkader, R. S., Abdulle, A. M., Abebo, T. A., Abera, S. F., et al. (2017) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(17)32154-2 · Cited by 13,220
Self-citationRoth, G. A., Abate, D., Abate, K. H., Abay, S. M., Abbafati, C., Abbasi, N., Abbastabar, H., Abd-Allah, F., Abdela, J., Abdelalim, A., et al. (2018) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(18)32203-7 · Cited by 8,600
Self-citationVos, T., Allen, C., Arora, M., Barber, R. M., Bhutta, Z. A., Brown, A., Carter, A., Casey, D. C., Charlson, F. J., Chen, A. Z., et al. (2016) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(16)31678-6 · Cited by 7,253
Self-citationWhat low back pain is and why we need to pay attention
Hartvigsen, J., Hancock, M. J., Kongsted, A., Louw, Q., Ferreira, M. L., Genevay, S., Hoy, D., Karppinen, J., Pransky, G., Sieper, J., et al. (2018) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(18)30480-x · Cited by 4,652
Self-citationPrevention and treatment of low back pain: evidence, challenges, and promising directions
Foster, N. E., Anema, J. R., Cherkin, D., Chou, R., Cohen, S. P., Gross, D. P., Ferreira, P. H., Fritz, J. M., Koes, B. W., Peul, W., et al. (2018) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(18)30489-6 · Cited by 2,398 · cited 5×
“Key recommended principles for LBP would be to reduce unnecessary imaging and treatment, support people to be active and stay at work, and to only use medication, imaging, and surgery prudently (33).”
BackgroundInfluentialSelf-citationThe epidemiology of low back pain
Hoy, D., Brooks, P., Blyth, F., & Buchbinder, R. (2010) · Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology · doi:10.1016/j.berh.2010.10.002 · Cited by 2,037
Self-citationLow back pain: a call for action
Buchbinder, R., van Tulder, M., Öberg, B., Costa, L. M., Woolf, A., Schoene, M., Croft, P., Buchbinder, R., Hartvigsen, J., Cherkin, D., et al. (2018) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(18)30488-4 · Cited by 1,242
Self-citationPsychological factors in chronic pain: Evolution and revolution
Turk, D. C., & Okifuji, A. (2002) · Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-006x.70.3.678 · Cited by 1,017
Lee, H., Hübscher, M., Moseley, G. L., Kamper, S. J., Traeger, A. C., Mansell, G., & McAuley, J. H. (2015) · Pain · doi:10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000146 · Cited by 526
Vlaeyen, J. W. S., Maher, C. G., Wiech, K., Van Zundert, J., Meloto, C. B., Diatchenko, L., Battié, M. C., Goossens, M., Koes, B., & Linton, S. J. (2018) · Nature Reviews Disease Primers · doi:10.1038/s41572-018-0052-1 · Cited by 497
Cited by
New generation psychological treatments in chronic pain
McCracken, L. M., Yu, L., & Vowles, K. E. (2022) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj-2021-057212 · Cited by 123
The Use of Virtual Reality in Back Pain Rehabilitation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Bordeleau, M., Stamenkovic, A., Tardif, P.-A., & Thomas, J. (2022) · The Journal of Pain · doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2021.08.001 · Cited by 86
Chronic overlapping pain conditions and nociplastic pain
Johnston, K. J. A., Signer, R., & Huckins, L. M. (2025) · Human Genetics and Genomics Advances · doi:10.1016/j.xhgg.2024.100381 · Cited by 35
Moshe, I., Terhorst, Y., Paganini, S., Schlicker, S., Pulkki-Råback, L., Baumeister, H., Sander, L. B., & Ebert, D. D. (2022) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/38261 · Cited by 28
Lewandrowski, K.-U., Sharafshah, A., Elfar, J., Schmidt, S. L., Blum, K., & Wetzel, F. T. (2024) · Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology · doi:10.1007/s10571-024-01466-5 · Cited by 16
Metadata
- Authors
- Wu, A., March, L., Zheng, X., Huang, J., Wang, X., Zhao, J., Blyth, F. M., Smith, E., Buchbinder, R., & Hoy, D.
- Venue
- Annals of Translational Medicine
- Publisher
- AME Publishing Company
- Published
- 2020-03
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 299-299
- ISSN
- 2305-5839 (ISSN-L)
- 2305-5847
- OpenAlex
- W3010721913
- Cited by
- 1,550
- References
- 10
- FWCI
- 91.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Global low back pain prevalence and years lived with disability from 1990 to 2017: estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.21037/atm.2020.02.175
- The paper
- Wu, A., March, L., Zheng, X., Huang, J., Wang, X., Zhao, J., Blyth, F. M., Smith, E., Buchbinder, R., & Hoy, D. (2020). Global low back pain prevalence and years lived with disability from 1990 to 2017: estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Annals of Translational Medicine. https://doi.org/10.21037/atm.2020.02.175
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
