Age and Disc Degeneration in Low Back Pain: Automated Analysis Enables a Magnetic Resonance Imaging Comparison of Large Cross-Sectional Groups of Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Subjects

Background: Degeneration of the intervertebral disc has long been associated with low back pain even though disc degeneration is seen in people who are asymptomatic. Investigations into the relationship between pain and disc degeneration in symptomatic and asymptomatic subjects are hampered by study sizes, by variations in definition of back pain and differences in MRI annotations of degeneration, study-to-study.   Methods: We compared...