Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Background: One in three older adults suffer from chronic pain with the prevalence expected to increase as the population ages. Recent attention has been given to the association between biomarkers and pain as both risk factors and prognostic indicators. However, most studies have looked at biomarkers in isolation. Therefore, the aim of this study was to use the large dataset of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) to evaluate the association of biomarkers with pain and the inter-relationship with falls, socio-demographics, biopsychosocial factors (e.g., depression, nutritional risk), and mobility. Methods: This is a longitudinal study of a 3-year follow-up of CLSA data. Community-dwelling adults who were between 45 to 85 years old at recruitment, from any sex living in urban or rural Canada were included. Biomarkers included body composition (dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA)) and plasma levels of inflammation biomarkers (IL-9, TNF-alpha and CRP). An evidence-based theoretical model on known relationships was built prior to the analysis. A path analysis was conducted to estimate the direct and direct effects. Results: We included 30,097 older adults with a mean age of 62.9 (SD 10.2) years old and 14,777 (49.1%) were male. We found that males, have higher nutrition risk, lower satisfaction with life, higher bone mineral density, higher fat mass, and lower lean mass had the strongest effects on pain. The indirect effects accounted for 39% of the total effect of nutrition risk. Inflammatory biomarkers have an important direct effect on pain and receive influences from nutritional risk. Conclusions: Pain in older adults should be considered a complex phenomenon. Nutrition risk has important mediation effects on important biomarkers for pain. Inflammatory biomarkers showed an important direct effect on pain and suffering influenced by nutritional risk.