Overweight/obesity and vitamin D deficiency contribute to the global burden of low back pain

The paper by Hoy and colleagues presents the global burden of low back pain [LBP].1 From Table 3 of this paper, it appears that the regions with the highest tertile of prevalence for males and females are Australasia, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America tropical, North Africa/Middle East and Western Europe, while the regions in the lowest tertile are the Caribbean, East Asia, Latin American Andean, central and southern, North America high income, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa east. Given the enormous magnitude of the problem, the authors stated ‘There is an urgent need to increase our understanding, and attemptto mitigate the growing burden of LBP’. While the paper did not discuss possible causes of LBP, two are reasonably well known: …