Qualitative imaging features of IVD degeneration are seen in 40% of people under 30-years-old and in 90% of people over 50-years-old [15]. Many do not experience symptoms which speaks to the fact that IVD degeneration is common age-related change [7]. However, the severity of IVD degeneration predicts first time LBP episodes [21]. The structural and biochemical mechanisms of DLBP attempt to explain the transformation from asymptomatic IVD degeneration to symptomatic IVD degeneration, or active discopathy [6, 7, 17, 18].
The NP of a healthy IVD resists compression, a function derived from high water and proteoglycan content paired with an intact annulus fibrosis (AF) [22, 23, 28]. An early characteristic of IVD degeneration is proteoglycan breakdown. Proteoglycans notochordal cell derivatives that decline in quantity with increasing age [29, 30]. Because notochordal cells are less abundant, intact proteoglycan content decreases and allows for reduced imbibition of water and nutrients into the NP. The hoop stress forces of the AF are reduced as the NP water content decreases, allowing for structural causes of DLBP such as annular tears and disc herniations [31, 32]. In disc herniation patients, presentation is often with radicular symptoms and less often with centralized pain. In this case, the patient had a disc protrusion but no radicular symptoms further suggesting the pain source as a degenerative IVD and not nerve root.
Other considerations in DLBP are biochemical changes that occur. The healthy IVD is avascular requiring the use of glycolysis as its energy system which creates lactate as a byproduct. In a healthy IVD with imbibition of water and nutrients in exchange for waste products, lactate levels stay low. Decreased imbibition occurs with reduced intact proteoglycan. As the degenerative process continues, cartilaginous endplates calcify further reducing imbibition [30, 31]. Lactate accumulation results in a reduced intradiscal pH, accelerated degeneration of proteoglycans, hypoxia, and cell death [15, 19, 22]. With increased lactate there is also increased proinflammatory cytokines, more so in IVDs with adjacent Modic Type 1 changes [6, 15, 20, 30, 32].
Structural changes occur synchronously with biochemical changes. A healthy IVD is only innervated in the outer layers of the AF. When annular fissures occur, inflammatory cells and lactate present in a degenerative IVD can reach the normally innervated outer layers of the AF. These tissues have acid sensing ion channels making them sensitive to pH changes [31–33]. More importantly, biochemical changes and annular fissures create an environment conducive to vascular granulation tissue formation and neoneural growth. New nerves grow into previously aneural areas of the AF as deep as the NP where intradiscal pH is low and proinflammatory cytokines are high [15, 21, 31, 32].
While the structural and biochemical causes of DLBP are known, there are no adequate sensitive and specific clinical tests for DLBP. The goal of clinical evaluation of LBP patients should be to identify or rule out serious pathology. Once accomplished, more benign pathoanatomic diagnoses for LBP can be considered. Precise clinical characteristics of DLBP are not well defined and complex pathomechanisms of LBP frequently make diagnosis uncertain. Although centralized LBP is highly sensitive for DLBP, it is not specific [21]. Adding further complexity to LBP patients are contributing psychosocial factors as they impact prognosis and treatment options. These individual contextual factors and lack of specificity in clinical diagnosis lead to significant variability in management of DLBP patients [4, 11].
A solution to the lack of specificity in the diagnosis of DLBP may be a more specific imaging modality. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy is a non-invasive, objective quantification of chemical differences in tissues used to evaluate specific biomarkers. It takes advantage of the fact that all metabolites interact slightly differently with a magnetic field based on the distribution of electrons in a molecule. Consequently, each metabolite resonates at slightly different magnetic resonance frequencies, or chemical shifts [4, 34]. Specific to DLBP, Keshari et al showed metabolites like proteoglycans and lactate serve as spectroscopically quantifiable biomarkers in ex-vivo IVD specimens [22].
Recently, Gornet et al utilized MRS to characterize in-vivo metabolic features of painful lumbar IVDs using NOCISCAN technology [19]. NOCISCAN utilizes MRS to assess relative biomarkers for IVD degeneration and pain. Imaging technologists mark a region-of-interest inside the IVD NP on a conventional MRI sequence to represent a voxel of information. NOCISCAN-LS exam proprietary protocol is run and a cloud-based post-processing analysis creates MRS spectra, or graph of relative peaks of resonance plotted right to left on the x-axis. The y-axis describes the degree of chemical shift. These spectral signatures are measured with a diagnostic algorithm to generate a NOCISCORE ratio of proteoglycans to lactate which has been correlated to provocative discography.
Gornet et al showed that the spectral measurements of proteoglycans and lactate that were used to create the NOCISCORE score showed reliable identification of painful IVDs when compared to provocative discography and had a significant favorable impact on surgical outcomes [19]. Because provocative discography is painful, invasive, and leads to accelerated degeneration in the injected segments, there is debate about the overall usefulness of the modality [4, 13, 14]. Gornet et al showed MRS compares to provocative discography without the associated risks [19].
In our case, the painful IVDs identified were L5/S1 which demonstrated qualitative changes, but also L3/4 which interestingly did not show any qualitative changes. This suggests that MRS and NOCISCAN technology can identify degenerative IVD changes earlier than qualitative imaging modalities. After treatment, both of these levels improved in their structural and biochemical components. Unfortunately, this patient experienced an exacerbation of pain days prior to the second scan. The L5/S1 NOCISCORE was increased in the post-treatment scan, but since NOCISCORE is a ratio of the proteoglycans to lactate, it likely represents the significant increase in proteoglycans associated with the SI-SCORE (Fig. 2a,c and Fig. 3a,c). Alternatively, it may be explained by variability in temporal expression of molecular scale events from those at tissue levels. Additionally, there is a known disconnect between degenerative structure and function that varies in both frequency and duration. More research could assess IVD structural integrity and pain biomarkers to understand when these changes occur and how they evolve during treatment.
Non-surgical treatments are most commonly utilized in DLBP patients. The most non-invasive option is patient education, which should be employed alongside every other treatment used in accordance with the Biopsychosocial patient care model. Patient education includes advice to stay active, assurance of the benignity of DLBP, and its favorable course, which was utilized in our case. Relaxation techniques and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can modify negative thoughts and rumination about pain/disability and to address any coexisting catastrophization and kinesophobia [9, 26, 35].
Other non-surgical treatments include opioid analgesic therapy (OAT), exercise, and SMT. Whedon et al compared long-term outcomes for patients who initiated LBP care with SMT to patients who initiated care with OAT. They concluded the SMT group had fewer rates of escalated care thereby reducing overall cost burden [27]. A systematic review and meta-analysis performed by Paige et al showed statistically significant improvement of SMT similar to NSAIDs, but with only transient minor musculoskeletal harms, whereas NSAIDS can be very harmful to certain patient populations [9, 36].
SMT is used to treat mechanical aspects of pain, specifically in areas of hypomobility [37]. With a decreased water content in degenerative IVDs, it is theorized that motion segments become unstable or hypermobile. However, there is much literature supporting the idea that the IVD may become stiffer due to the changes in AF collagen [32, 38]. This has significant implications for treatment. Improving motion segment mobility may provide better outcomes than surgical fusion in the properly selected patient. In the presented case, Cox flexion-distraction SMT was utilized. Flexion-distraction SMT employs a slow manual traction and mobilization of spinal motion segments [39]. The outcomes of flexion-distraction SMT include increased mobility and a decrease in perceived pain. Choi et al evaluated the biomechanical aspect of flexion-distraction SMT on the IVD and concluded it also results in increased imbibition, movement of metabolites into the IVD, and increased IVD height [37].
In the appropriate patient, surgical treatment of specific lumbar segments can be beneficial. Gornet et al showed a significant impact on surgical outcomes in DLBP cases when the correct pathoanatomic target was identified. In their study, Gornet et al used MRS and NOCISCAN technology to identify painful IVDs. The outcomes were better in the group who had surgical treatment of only the specific levels identified as painful by NOCISCAN in comparison to the group whose surgical treatment included IVDs NOCISCAN identified as non-painful [19]. The lack of specificity of the correct pathoanatomic target may explain why outcomes of surgical intervention for DLBP have a low success rate.
In this case, post-treatment MRS and NOCISCORE results showed an improvement in structural integrity and biochemical changes. These results suggest that conservative management can improve those factors of IVD degeneration and DLBP. The mechanisms to explain why SMT may improve DLBP are variable. It may be as simple as increasing motion at those segments and improving imbibition to restore IVD homeostasis. Another area of study, mechanobiology, proposes it is mechanotransduction and cellular response to mechanical load.
Mechanotransduction is the process cells use to detect and respond to mechanical signals and may be the mechanism underlying clinical benefits of SMT [40]. There is no evidence to support spontaneous regeneration of the IVD. However, the notochordal cells within the NP from which proteoglycans are derived, have in animal models shown to differentiate into mature NP cells under mechanical stimulation [29, 31]. Ex vivo studies have demonstrated that both NP cells and AF cells have a strong direct response to external mechanical stimuli. The response is dose dependent with low magnitude and moderate frequency tensile load promoting proteoglycan production. In contrast to therapeutic effects, elevated magnitude and frequency tensile or compressive loads are catabolic, decreasing proteoglycan production and activating metalloproteinases [29, 38, 40]. More research in this field may help develop appropriate load dose in conservative management of DLBP.
Case report results cannot be generalized to a larger population. However, this case report was heavily influenced by innovative work done by Gornet et al who showed MRS and NOCISCAN technology can identify painful IVDs across a larger sample of patients with DLBP. As this is the first case where post-treatment MRS was performed in a conservatively treated patient, a larger study is needed to validate the results.