Background & Aims
Life course perspectives reveal critical periods in life and facilitate identification of risk groups. How musculoskeletal pain develops over the adult life course and how this development varies between individuals is largely unknown.
Methods
In the present study, a gender stratified latent factor growth curve model was used to identify different age trajectories in a Swedish population representative sample with 20 000 observations of 3000 individuals in a cohort of mixed ages followed over 42 years, with a total age range from 15 to 101 years. Musculoskeletal pain in joints, back, or shoulders during the last year was categorized as: no pain (0), light pain at 1-3 sites (1), severe pain at one site (2), and severe pain at 2-3 sites (3).
Results
Among both women and men two trajectories were identified, respectively: a risk group and all others. In the risk group, pain increased through working age and decreased after retirement age. For all others, average pain levels corresponding to more than light pain occurred only after retirement age. The genders’ trajectories were similar, although the women’s risk group (20%) was twice the size of the men’s (9%).
Conclusions
The increase of pain among all others after retirement age probably reflect normal aging, i.e., increase in diseases and frailty. The risk group’s trajectory is probably due to accumulated effects of different risk factors during working life. The average development in the population is a composite where the risk group’s development obscures the pain increase in old age due to normal aging.
References
None
Presenting Author
Kozma Ahacic
Poster Authors
Kozma Ahacic
PhD
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet
Lead Author
Topics
- Epidemiology