Chiropractic Care Helps Patients of All Ages According to Study

On July 31, 2025, the journal Chiropractic & Manual Therapies published a study with the title, “Differences in demographics and clinical outcomes in older, middle-aged, and younger adults with LBP (low back pain) receiving chiropractic care.” The goal of this study was to determine the differences in patient symptoms and results of chiropractic care between older, middle-aged and younger patients with lower back pain who underwent chiropractic care.

The study begins by pointing out that older adults with LBP experience more severe pain that has a greater impact on their daily lives and activities as compared with younger patients. They also point out that older adults usually have additional health conditions that they are being treated for. Older adults also take longer to recover from LBP than their younger counterparts.

In this study, 2,777 participants were included who had experienced new LBP. All participants were asked to fill out online electronic questionnaires. There were 1,066 participants under the age of 40 who were categorized into the young group, 1,270 participants between the ages 40 and 59 years were considered the middle-aged group, and 441 who were at or above 60 years of age were classified as the older group. Women comprised 41.3% of the total participants.

As expected, the older group had a higher number of non-musculoskeletal problems and a higher usage rate of medications including pain medications. Younger patients in this study had higher levels of depression and anxiety when compared to older and middle-aged study participants.

Chiropractic care was shown to help all three ages groups. The disability scores were shown to decrease regardless of age group, although older patients did show slightly higher scores overall. The disability scores were improved at the same rate for both the younger and middle-aged patients after chiropractic care.

One unexpected finding was that younger patients more frequently reported additional musculoskeletal (MSK) than the older group. They also found that younger patients also exhibited higher levels of depression and anxiety compared to their older counterparts. The researchers found that self-perceived health and not age was the largest determining factor in how well patients responded to care.

In their conclusion, the authors summed up their findings by saying, “This study found that while older chiropractic patients with LBP had slightly higher disability scores and a higher prevalence of non-MSK comorbidities, age was not the strongest factor associated with disability outcomes. Instead, baseline disability, depression, self-perceived general health, and MSK comorbidities were more consistently linked to higher disability scores across all follow-up time points. These findings suggest that age should not be viewed as an isolated risk factor for prolonged disability, but rather as one part of a broader biopsychosocial framework.”