Association between Obesity and the Prevalence of Disc Herniation Diseases Based on Cohort Data

Objectives This study is aimed to investigate the association between obesity, abdominal obesity and the prevalence of disc herniation disease (DHD).Methods Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), DHD prevalence and component data were extracted and analyzed from the final 8,027 participants in sasang constitution district cohort data which is collected from Korean medicine data center.Obesity was classified based on BMI, abdominal obesity was classified based on WC, WHR.Cross-analysis and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were performed, and the significance level was set to p<0.05.Results In general characteristics, the proportion of women and the mean age were significantly higher in DHD group.The mean of BMI, WC and WHR was also significantly higher in DHD group.The proportion of overweight and obese (based on BMI) was significantly higher in DHD group.The proportion of abdominal obese (based on WC, WHR) was also significantly higher in DHD group.However, when the subjects were analyzed separately by sex, the mean of WC and WHR were significantly higher in DHD group, but there was no significant difference in BMI.The mean of WHR by obesity group was significantly higher in DHD group just in the normal and underweight group.As the result of ANCOVA with sex and age as covariate, the mean of WHR was affected by age, but the mean of WC and BMI showed a significant difference regardless of sex and age effect.Conclusions Obesity and abdominal obesity are positively associated with disc herniation disease and it can be affected by sex and age.(