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Article History

Received: 6 July 2020

Revised: 10 August 2020

Accepted: 18 September 2020

First Online: 29 October 2020

Compliance with ethical standards

:

: The scientific guarantor of this publication is Herregods Nele.

: The authors of this manuscript declare no relationships with any companies whose products or services may be related to the subject matter of the article.

: One of the authors (Stefanie L. De Buyser, Biostatistics Unit, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Ghent University) has significant statistical expertise.

: Written informed consent was obtained from all subjects (patients and their parents) in this study.

: Institutional Review Board approval was obtained.

: Some study subjects or cohorts have been previously reported in some of our previous reports on other topics (77/251 patients). We have published on pediatric patients with low back pain or established spondyloarthritis. This is our first manuscript focused on normal children with no history of back pain. This manuscript focuses on new data on a unique group of 127 “normal” patients, with asymptomatic sacroiliacal joints who were being imaged for non-rheumatologic conditions, of whom we have not published before. We compare findings in this group to a set of 124 “LBP” patients whom we have previously analyzed, who did not show features of sacroiliitis at initial clinical MRI review but who presented with inflammatory back pain symptoms. The high similarity we note in physiologic findings between findings in the normal and “LBP” cohorts is an important observation that can help guide study design for future research in this field.

: • prospective• observational• performed at one institution