Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Clinical Trial
. 2025 Feb:122:106416.
doi: 10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2024.106416. Epub 2024 Dec 14.

Can summary measures of magnitude and structure of trunk movement variability differentiate between people with and without chronic low back pain?

Florian Abu Bakar  1 , Alexis F Homs  2 , J Bart Staal  3 , Ryan B Graham  4 , Christophe Demattei  5 , Pascal Kouyoumdjian  6 , Arnaud F Dupeyron  2 , Jaap H van Dieën  7
Affiliations
Free article
Clinical Trial

Can summary measures of magnitude and structure of trunk movement variability differentiate between people with and without chronic low back pain?

Florian Abu Bakar et al. Clin Biomech (Bristol). 2025 Feb.
Free article

Abstract

Background: There is inconsistent evidence suggesting that people with chronic low back pain may differ in variability of repeated trunk movements compared to people without chronic low back pain. These inconsistencies may be due to low reliability and task dependence of movement variability measures, which can be addressed using multiple movement tasks and summary measures.

Methods: Participants with and without chronic low back pain were recruited. Measurement sessions involved 30 repetitions of movements in the sagittal, transverse, and combined planes. Kinematics of the pelvis, thorax, and lumbar spine were estimated using inertial sensors placed on the sacrum and thorax. Magnitude of movement variability was quantified as the mean standard deviation of Euler angles for the thorax, pelvis, and lumbar spine across normalized cycles for each movement axes, resulting in 27 variables. Additionally, structure of variability was assessed using Lyapunov exponents for local dynamic stability, yielding 9 additional variables. Principal Component Analysis reduced the dimensionality of each variability measure (magnitude and structure). Stepwise logistic regression with principal component scores tested for differences between groups.

Findings: In the magnitude of variability analysis, four principal components were retained. The first two principal components significantly differentiated between people with low back pain and controls, accounting for 32.5 % and 14 % of the total variance, respectively. In the structure of variability analysis, no principal components were found to significantly contribute to differentiating between the two groups.

Interpretation: Summary measures of the magnitude, but not the structure, of trunk movement variability differentiated between people with and without chronic low back pain.

Clinical trial: NCT02059317, CPP: 2013.11.09bis Sud Méditerranée III, N° RCB: 2013-A01379-36.

Keywords: Inertial measurement units (IMUs); Low back pain; Principal component analysis; Variability.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest One co-author, Jaap van Dieen, is a member of the editorial board of Clinical Biomechanics If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Publication types