Zemene Demelash Kifle, Jing Tian, Dawn Aitken, Phillip E Melton, Flavia Cicuttini, Graeme Jones, Feng Pan
Abstract
Musculoskeletal pain typically occurs in multiple sites; however, no study has examined whether excessive visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue are associated with musculoskeletal pain. This study therefore aimed to describe the associations between MRI-derived abdominal adipose tissue and multisite and widespread chronic musculoskeletal pain.
Data from the UK Biobank, a large prospective, population-based cohort study, were used. Abdominal MRI scans were performed at two imaging visits to quantify visceral adipose tissue and subcutaneous adipose tissue. Pain in the neck/shoulder, back, hip, knee or 'all over the body' was assessed at the corresponding visits. Mixed-effects ordinal/multinomial/logistic regression models were used for the analyses.
A total of 32 409 participants were included (50.8% women, mean age 55.0±7.4 years). In multivariable analyses, there was a dose-response association of visceral adipose tissue, subcutaneous adipose tissue and their ratio with the number of chronic pain sites in both women (visceral adipose tissue: OR 2.04 per SD (95% CI 1.85 to 2.26); subcutaneous adipose tissue: OR 1.60 (95% CI 1.50 to 1.70); and their ratio: OR 1.60 (95% CI 1.37 to 1.87)) and men (visceral adipose tissue: OR 1.34 (95% CI 1.26 to 1.42); subcutaneous adipose tissue: OR 1.39 (95% CI 1.29 to 1.49); and their ratio: OR 1.13 (95% CI 1.07 to 1.20)). Higher levels of adipose tissue were also associated with greater odds of reporting chronic pain in both sexes. The effect estimates of these adipose measures were relatively larger in women than in men.
Abdominal adipose tissue was associated with chronic musculoskeletal pain, suggesting that excessive and ectopic fat depositions may be involved in the pathogenesis of multisite and widespread chronic musculoskeletal pain. The identified stronger effects in women than men may reflect sex differences in fat distribution and hormones.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 462. 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 08 October 2024.
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Altmetric has tracked 26,743,076 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
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