Association between cardiorespiratory fitness and low back pain is anxiety-dependent: A prospective cohort study among adults and older adults

ABSTRACT

To investigate the relationship between low back pain and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) among participants with and without self-report anxiety. Participants were 13,080 individuals (86.6% men; 44.7 ± 9.3 years). CRF was quantified as maximal treadmill test duration and was grouped for analysis as low (lowest 20% of treadmill test duration), moderate (middle 40%), and high (upper 40%). Cox regression analysis was used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) between low back pain and CRF according to the presence/absence of self-report anxiety. During an average of 5.7 ± 5.1 years of follow-up, 2,965 cases of low back pain were identified. Participants with self-report anxiety and low CRF had 3.7 times (HR: 3.7; 95%CI: 1.7–8.2) more risk for having low back pain when compared with participants with self-report anxiety and high CRF. Additionally, among participants with self-reported anxiety, moderate CRF was associated with an 70% greater risk of having low back pain than those with high CRF (HR: 1.7; 95%CI: 1.1–3.2). For participants without self-reported anxiety, no association was found between the risk of having low back pain and CRF. According to the results identified in the present study, participants with self-reported anxiety who had low and moderate CRF had higher risks of low back pain than those with high CRF.

KEYWORDS:

• Adult
• aged
• mental health
• longitudinal studies
• exercise

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the staff from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study (ACLS), who undertook the data collection. DASS was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)—Brazil—Finance Code 001 and DASS is supported in part by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)—Brazil—no 309589/2021-5.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2023.2249756

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.