Physical and psychological differences between athletes with and without chronic primary low back pain: a scoping review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: Low back pain among athletes varies by sport, age, and sex, affecting performance and contributing to sports retirement. Recently, there has been an increasing focus on chronic primary low back pain (CPLBP) in athletes. The aim of this scoping review is to examine the existing literature on CPLBP, focusing on the physical and psychological differences between athletes with and without CPLBP. Design and Methods: A systematic search across MEDLINE, CINAHL, SportDiscus, and PsycINFO, guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Guidelines (PRISMA), identified 11 relevant studies. Three key concepts guided the search: "chronic low back pain", "physical and psychological characteristics", and "athletes". Results: From 1,767 screened articles, 11 studies involving 717 athletes (301 with CPLBP and 416 without) met the inclusion criteria. Most studies showed that athletes with CPLBP had significantly lower trunk muscle activation amplitudes and delayed onset. One study found that athletes with CPLBP had significantly reduced trunk extension strength. Kinematic evaluations showed a significant increase in trunk damping and lumbar extension in athletes with CPLBP compared to athletes without CPLBP. However, other studies reported no significant differences in trunk muscle activity, kinetic and kinematic variables. Finally, athletes with CPLBP reported significantly higher kinesiophobia, anxiety and pain catastrophizing scores. Conclusions: This review shows significant physiological and psychological differences between athletes with and without CPLBP. Future research should focus on sport-specific assessments of CPLBP and its impact on performance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.034 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.014 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".