Low back pain is a prevalent pathology and a frequent cause of disability. It is associated with increasing costs for the health system and for society in developed countries, affecting 70% of the general population at some point in their lives, with an annual incidence of 40%. Low back pain has a tendency to become chronic or to produce relapses that can severely affect the day-to-day life of patients who suffer from it. Identifying the prognostic factors of chronicity has become one of the priorities of researchers on lumbar pathology. In about 85% of cases it is not possible to find a precise cause of the pain. Studies that evaluate the presence of anatomical or structural changes in the lumbar spine by means such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging or discography are not able to correlate these anomalies with a poor prognosis in low back pain. The concept that relates chronic pain with structural alterations must be reconsidered in view of the recent scientific evidence.
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This work is supported by the Regional Ministry of Health of the Valencian Region, under MIDAS project from BIMCV--Generalitat Valenciana, under the grant agreement ACIF/2018/285.
Authors thanks the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Unit from Principe Felipe Research Center (CIPF) for providing access to the cluster co-funded by European Regional Development Funds (FEDER) in the Valencian Community 2014-2020, and by the Biomedical Imaging Mixed Unit from Fundació per al Foment de la Investigació Sanitaria i biomedica (FISABIO) for providing access to the cluster openmind, co-funded by European Regional Development Funds (FEDER) in Valencian Community 2014-2020. In addition, it is part of the use cases of the European project DeepHealth.
Authors thanks the Instituto de Física Corpuscular for providing access to the Artemisa cluster co-funded by European Regional Development Funds (FEDER) in the Valencian Community 2014-2020.