The relationships between sedentary lifestyle, sitting behaviour, and low back pain (LBP) remain controversial. In this study, we investigated the relationship between back pain and occupational sitting habits in 64 call-centre employees. A textile pressure mat was used to evaluate and parameterise sitting behaviour over a total of 400 h, while pain questionnaires evaluated acute and chronic LBP. Seventy-five percent of the participants reported some level of either chronic or acute back pain. Individuals with chronic LBP demonstrated a possible trend (t-test not significant) towards more static sitting behaviour compared to their pain-free counterparts. Furthermore, a greater association was found between sitting behaviour and chronic LBP than for acute pain/disability, which is plausibly due to a greater awareness of pain-free sitting positions in individuals with chronic pain compared to those affected by acute pain.

Background: Chronic ankle instability, developing from ankle sprain, is one of the most common sports injuries. Besides it being an ankle issue, chronic ankle instability can also cause additional injuries. Investigating the epidemiology of chronic ankle instability is an essential step to develop an adequate injury prevention strategy. However, the epidemiology of chronic ankle instability remains unknown. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the epidemiology of chronic ankle instability through valid and reliable self‐reported tools in active populations.Methods: An electronic search was performed on PubMed and Web of Science in July 2020. The inclusion criteria for articles were peer‐reviewed, published between 2006 and 2020, using one of the valid and reliable tools to evaluate ankle instability, determining chronic ankle instability based on the criteria of the International Ankle Consortium, and including the outcome of epidemiology of chronic ankle instability. The risk of bias of the included studies was evaluated with an adapted tool for the sports injury review method.Results: After removing duplicated studies, 593 articles were screened for eligibility. Twenty full‐texts were screened and finally nine studies were included, assessing 3804 participants in total. The participants were between 15 and 32 years old and represented soldiers, students, athletes and active individuals with a history of ankle sprain. The prevalence of chronic ankle instability was 25%, ranging between 7 and 53%. The prevalence of chronic ankle instability within participants with a history of ankle sprains was 46%, ranging between 9 and 76%. Five included studies identified chronic ankle instability based on the standard criteria, and four studies applied adapted exclusion criteria to conduct the study. Five out of nine included studies showed a low risk of bias.Conclusions: The prevalence of chronic ankle instability shows a wide range. This could be due to the different exclusion criteria, age, sports discipline, or other factors among the included studies. For future studies, standardized criteria to investigate the epidemiology of chronic ankle instability are required. The epidemiology of CAI should be prospective. Factors affecting the prevalence of chronic ankle instability should be investigated and clearly described.

Nowadays, working in an office environment is ubiquitous. At the same time, progressively more people suffer from occupational musculoskeletal disorders. Therefore, the aim of this pilot study was to analyse the influence of back pain on sitting behaviour in the office environment. A textile pressure mat (64-sensor-matrix) placed on the seat pan was used to identify the adopted sitting positions of 20 office workers by means of random forest classification. Additionally, two standardised questionnaires (Korff, BPI) were used to assess short and long-term back pain in order to divide the subjects into two groups (with and without back pain). Independent t-test indicated that subjects who registered back pain within the last 24 h showed a clear trend towards a more static sitting behaviour. Therefore, the developed sensor system has successfully been introduced to characterise and compare sitting behaviour of subjects with and without back pain.

Decades of research have demonstrated that physical stress stimulates bone remodeling and affects bone structure and function through complex mechanotransduction mechanisms. Re-cent research has laid ground to the hypothesis that mental stress also influences bone biology, eventually leading to osteoporosis and increased bone fracture risk. These effects are likely exerted by modulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity, resulting in an altered release of growth hormones, glucocorticoids and cytokines, as demonstrated in human and animal studies. Furthermore, molecular crosstalk between mental and physical stress is thought to exist, with either synergistic or preventative effects on bone disease progression depending on the characteristics of the applied stressor. This mini review will explain the emerging con-cept of mental stress as an important player in bone adaptation and its potential crosstalk with physical stress by summarizing the current state of knowledge, highlighting newly evolving notions (such as intergenerational transmission of stress and its epigenetic modifications af-fecting bone) and proposing new research directions.

Purpose: Psychosocial variables are known risk factors for the development and chronification of low back pain (LBP). Psychosocial stress is one of these risk factors. Therefore, this study aims to identify the most important types of stress predicting LBP. Self-efficacy was included as a potential protective factor related to both, stress and pain. Participants and Methods: This prospective observational study assessed n = 1071 subjects with low back pain over 2 years. Psychosocial stress was evaluated in a broad manner using instruments assessing perceived stress, stress experiences in work and social contexts, vital exhaustion and life-event stress. Further, self-efficacy and pain (characteristic pain intensity and disability) were assessed. Using least absolute shrinkage selection operator regression, important predictors of characteristic pain intensity and pain-related disability at 1-year and 2-years follow-up were analyzed. Results: The final sample for the statistic procedure consisted of 588 subjects (age: 39.2 (± 13.4) years; baseline pain intensity: 27.8 (± 18.4); disability: 14.3 (± 17.9)). In the 1-year follow-up, the stress types “tendency to worry”, “social isolation”, “work discontent” as well as vital exhaustion and negative life events were identified as risk factors for both pain intensity and pain-related disability. Within the 2-years follow-up, Lasso models identified the stress types “tendency to worry”, “social isolation”, “social conflicts”, and “perceived long-term stress” as potential risk factors for both pain intensity and disability. Furthermore, “self-efficacy” (“internality”, “self-concept”) and “social externality” play a role in reducing pain-related disability. Conclusion: Stress experiences in social and work-related contexts were identified as important risk factors for LBP 1 or 2 years in the future, even in subjects with low initial pain levels. Self-efficacy turned out to be a protective factor for pain development, especially in the long-term follow-up. Results suggest a differentiation of stress types in addressing psychosocial factors in research, prevention and therapy approaches.

Undesired career termination represents a critical life event for professional athletes. This study examined traumatic stress resulting from (a) a career-ending event and (b) the athlete’s separation from his or her social support network. Data were collected from 40 professional athletes who were members of the German National Ski Team, using standardized (Impact of Event Scale; Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale) and partially standardized (psychosomatic stress reaction) questionnaires. Correlations between the impact of termination and traumatic stress symptoms were observed over a period of 8 months. Athletes who experienced supportive termination (involving discussion with coaches) endorsed fewer symptoms than those who experienced socially disintegrative termination (lacking support of coaches). Nearly 20% of participants endorsed clinically relevant levels of traumatic stress at 3 and 8 months posttermination.