Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Core Stabilization Exercise and Vitamin D Intake on Pain and Functional Disability Levels in Women with Chronic Non-specific Low Back Pain

Nowadays, the prevalence of chronic low back pain is increasing in the world and vitamin D deficiency is associated with impaired neuromuscular function and chronic musculoskeletal pain. In addition, exercise therapy and selection of core stabilization exercise interventions have main roles in rehabilitation of these patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of 8 weeks of core stabilization exercises and vitamin D intake on the pain and functional disability levels in women with chronic non-specific low back pain.

This clinical trial study was performed by pre-test and post-test design. Initially, 48 women with chronic non-specific low back pain were selected by available sampling method and then randomly divided into control, exercise, vitamin D and exercise+vitamin D (combined) groups (12 subjects in each group). The exercise and combined groups performed 8 weeks of core stabilizing exercises. The vitamin D and combined groups received 50,000 IU vitamin D/week for 8 weeks. The severity of the pain and functional disability, before and after the interventions, were determined by visual analog scale of pain and Oswestry questionnaire, respectively. Data analysis was performed using Paired T-Test and ANOVA with the significance level of less than 0.05.

Eight weeks of core stabilizing exercises, vitamin D intake and the combined intervention were associated with a significant reduction (p<0.001) in pain (20.15%, 18.60% and 34.20%, respectively) and functional disability (48.35%, 44.26% and 51.81%, respectively) in women with chronic non-specific low back pain. In addition, combined intervention induced more reduction in the pain compared with two other interventions (p<0.001)

It seems that core stabilizing exercises, vitamin D intake, and the combination intervention can reduce the pain and improve the physical function in patients with chronic low back who have low levels of vitamin D. But combined intervention is associated with greater effectiveness in reducing the pain.