Genes may be important in back, neck pain

For their study, Hartvigsen and colleagues analyzed information from 7,664 twin pairs involved in the Danish Twin Registry - 56 percent of whom were fraternal twins, and 44 percent identical.

Twin studies like these allow researchers to weed out the influences of genes and environment on people's disease risks, behaviors and traits.

Identical twins share the same genetic makeup, while fraternal twins share about half of their genes, making them no more genetically similar than non-twin siblings. So if, for example, genes were more important in the risk of a health problem than environmental exposures, identical twins would be more similar in their risk than fraternal twins would be.

When Hartvigsen and his colleagues looked at the twins' reports of back and neck pain, they found that genes appeared to explain a significant portion of the risk. Genetic susceptibility accounted for about 38 percent of the variation among individuals in the risk of lower back pain.

Genes were similarly important in middle back pain and neck pain, the study found.

The specific genes involved, and the mechanisms by which they make some people more vulnerable to back and neck pain, are unknown.

A surprising finding from this study, Hartvigsen said, was that the importance of genes in different types of pain - including chronic, long-standing pain or more intermittent, recurrent pain - was "remarkably similar."

"This is an indication," he said, "that (the) same genes are in play regardless of where the pain is and, to some extent, regardless of the duration."

(Edit:Ruby)