ArticleScientific reports2024
Spinal degeneration and lumbar multifidus muscle quality may independently affect clinical outcomes in patients conservatively managed for low back or leg pain.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Preoperative paraspinal muscle fatty infiltration and prognosis after lumbar discectomy for disc herniation: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2026Pooled it
- Deep learning-based assessment of paraspinal muscle degeneration and its relationships to muscle function and disability outcomes in chronic low back pain: a prospective study.European radiology · 2026Article
- Association between lumbar disc degeneration at L4-L5 level and atrophy of paraspinal muscles and gluteus medius: a cross-sectional study using 3T quantitative magnetic resonance imaging.BMC medical imaging · 2025Article
- Explainable Machine Learning Applied to Bioelectrical Impedance for Low Back Pain: Classification and Pain-Score Prediction.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Radiological frontiers in understanding paraspinal muscle pathophysiology in chronic low back pain.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Few non-surgical, longitudinal studies have evaluated the relations between spinal degeneration, lumbar multifidus muscle (LMM) quality, and clinical outcomes. None have assessed the potential mediating role of the LMM between degenerative pathology and 12-month clinical outcomes. This prospective cohort study used baseline and 12-month follow-up data from 569 patients conservatively managed for low back or back-related leg pain to estimate the effects of aggregate degenerative lumbar MRI findings and LMM quality on 12-month low back and leg pain intensity (0-10) and disability (0-23) outcomes, and explored the mediating role of LMM quality between degenerative findings and 12-month clinical outcomes. Adjusted mixed effects generalized linear models separately estimated the effect of aggregate spinal pathology and LMM quality. Mediation models estimated the direct and indirect effects of pathology on leg pain, and pathology and LMM quality on leg pain, respectively. Multivariable analysis identified a leg pain rating change of 0.99 [0.14; 1.84] (unstandardized beta coefficients [95% CI]) in the presence of ≥ 4 pathologies, and a disability rating change of - 0.65 [- 0.14; - 1.16] for each 10% increase in muscle quality, but no effect on back pain intensity. Muscle quality had a non-significant mediating role (13.4%) between pathology and leg pain intensity. The number of different pathologies present demonstrated a small effect on 12-month leg pain intensity outcomes, while higher LMM quality had a direct effect on 12-month disability ratings but no mediating effect between pathology and leg pain. The relations between degenerative pathology, LMM quality, and pain-related outcomes appear complex and may include independent pathways.
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