ArticleJournal of pain research2026
Chronic Back Pain Increases Alzheimer's Disease Risk Independent of Gross Brain Structural Alterations: Genetic Evidence from Two Populations.
Article in Journal of pain research, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- The researcher is "not" an afterthought.European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Observational studies suggest chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) may be a risk factor for dementia, but confounding factors or reverse causation could obscure these findings. Additionally, whether brain structure imaging measurements mediate this relationship remains unclear. We aimed to investigate their causal association using Mendelian randomization (MR). Methods: Genetic instruments derived from genome-wide association studies were employed in a two-sample MR framework. Forward MR analysis examined the genetic effect of CMP on dementia, while reverse MR analysis evaluated the genetic effect of dementia on CMP to assess reverse causation. Primary causal estimates were obtained using the inverse-variance weighted method. Mediation analyses tested brain structural markers as potential mediators. Sensitivity analyses evaluated robustness and horizontal pleiotropy. Results: Primary inverse-variance weighted analysis suggested genetically predicted chronic back pain (CBP) is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) (Odds Ratio 2.287, 95% confidence interval: 1.338 to 3.909, Conclusion: Primary MR analyses support a directional association between genetically predicted CBP and increased AD risk. However, due to methodological constraints and wide confidence intervals, the large point estimate of the odds ratio should be interpreted with caution. Structural brain alterations do not appear to mediate this relationship. These findings highlight a potential causal pathway between CBP and AD, but require rigorous validation in independent, adequately powered cohorts before clinical inferences can be drawn.
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