Back pain is the most frequent type of pain and its prevalence is drastically increased over the last decade. This is severe enough to restrict the daily activities. This report, indicates that sever back pain is strongly associated with subsequent disability in both essential and instrumental activities of daily living.

To assess the association in restricting back pain and consequent disability in instrumental (i) and essential (e) activities of daily living (ADL) amidst community-living older adults.

A total of 754 adults of ≥70 years in age and with initially nondisabled in eADL were selected. Back pain and associated disability were evaluated during monthly interviews for 159 months. By adjusted for fixed-in-time and time-varying covariates, recurrent events Cox models were applied to determine the relationships between restricting back pain and subsequent eADL and iADL disability.

Significant correlations were observed between restricting back pain and eADL and iADL disability.

Restricting back pain was individually correlated with consequent disability in eADL and iADL. Treatments concentrated on reducing restricting back pain among older adults may have the potential to lessen the consequent burden of disability.