Human intervertebral discs undergo age-related degenerative changes that contribute to some of the most common causes of impairment and disability for middle aged and older persons: spine stiffness, neck pain, and back pain. Potential causes of the age-related degeneration of intervertebral discs include declining nutrition, loss of viable cells, cell senescence, post-translational modification of matrix proteins, accumulation of degraded matrix molecules, and fatigue failure of the matrix. The most important of these mechanisms appears to be decreasing nutrition of the central disc that allows accumulation of cell waste products and degraded matrix molecules, impairs cell nutrition, and causes a fall in pH levels that further compromises cell function and may cause cell death. Although aging changes of the disc appear to be inevitable, identification of activities and agents that accelerate these changes may help decrease the rate and severity of disc degeneration; and recent work suggests that methods can be developed that will regenerate disc tissue.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 7. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 November 2025.
All research outputs
#6,958,508
of 32,823,751 outputs
Outputs from Spine
#2,375
of 9,751 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#6,038
of 33,394 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Spine
#6
of 30 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,823,751 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 78th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 9,751 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.1. This one has done well, scoring higher than 75% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 33,394 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 30 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.
