Easing back pain

News

Researchers at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand are hoping to develop an artificial implant to ease chronic back pain.

Senior mechanical engineering lecturer Dr Mark Staiger and Prof Susan James, a visiting academic from the School of Biomedical Engineering at Colorado State University, are leading a project that will take the first steps towards replicating the structural and physiological properties of the human intervertebral disc.

The team, based at the university’s Centre for Bioengineering, has just been awarded $26,000 from the Brian Mason Scientific and Technical Trust to start the research.

The team also includes Dr Tim Woodfield from the Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Research Group (BioMATE) within UC’s Centre for Bioengineering.

Dr Staiger said that in most developed countries, lower back pain was the leading cause of chronic disability in adults aged between 18 and 45, and absenteeism due to back pain was second only to the common cold.

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