Prevalence, co-occurrence, and predictive factors for musculoskeletal pain among shellfish gatherers

The aims of this study are to determine prevalence and co-occurrence of musculoskeletal pain (MSP) among shellfish gatherers and its consequences for the use of medicine, health care, and sickness leave and to investigate predictive factors (sociodemographic, lifestyle, comorbidity) of MSP in five anatomical areas (neck/shoulder/higher back, lower back, elbow/wrist/hand, hip/knee, and leg/ankle/foot). Nine hundred twenty-nine shellfish gatherers (94% women) voluntarily took part in a physiotherapy workshop. A self-administered questionnaire was used to assess MSP and its consequences. Regression models were performed to determine the factors predicting the presence of MSP. The two most frequently self-reported forms of MSP were neck pain (70.9%) and lower back pain (65.5%). Sixty-four percent of respondents reported contact with their family doctor during the last 12 months due to MSP, and most subjects (88.1%) reported MSP in two or more locations. Hip/knee pain was associated with leg/ankle/foot pain (crude odds ratio = 3.14). Logistic regression analysis showed that being female and young is associated with lumbar pain, and being older is associated with pain in all areas of the lower limbs. The number of pain sites a person reported significantly predicted the presence of pain in all the anatomical areas studied. Prevalence of MSP and musculoskeletal comorbidity were high. The study shows that the presence of pain reported in one body area is highly dependent on the total number of painful areas. These findings are consistent with those of similar studies.