[Age, work and spinal pain]

To examine whether the relationship between age and musculoskeletal disorders in the spine is specific to one localization (cervical, dorsal, lumbar) or due to the accumulation of lesions with age.

Data were gathered from the ESTEV study among a randomly selected sample of 21,378 French workers, followed by 390 occupational physicians during the year 1990. The subjects, males or females, were born in 1938, 1943, 1948, 1953. Participation rate (88%) did not depend on age and sex. Data were collected during annual medical examination for medical variables, and using standardized self questionnaires for occupational exposures and work constraints for actual or past jobs.

Data on musculo-skeletal disorders, defined as pains during the last 6 months before examination, were recorded by occupational physician. Each painful localization was associated with the main factors described in the literature, particularly heavy physical work factors and psycho-social factors of work. There was no interaction between age and any of these. At the opposite, in male as female subjects, there was a statistically significant interaction between age, multiple exposures to heavy physical work factors and the frequency of multiple localizations of pain in the spine.

Results suggest that accumulation of pain in the different localizations of the spine might account for accelerated aging process of the musculo-skeletal structure of the spine which can reflect effects of environmental work factors.