The biggest cause of disability worldwide is low back pain, a new study has found.

According to Australian and UK researchers, almost 10% of people have suffered with low back pain and this problem is set to worsen due to a growing elderly population.

They based their findings on an analysis of a major global study that examined ill health and disability caused by all conditions in 187 countries during three time periods - 1990, 2005 and 2010. The countries were grouped into 21 regions.

When it came to back pain, the researchers looked specifically at 117 studies in 47 countries and 16 of the 21 global regions. They also included the results of surveys carried out in various countries.

They examined the toll taken by low back pain in terms of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). DALYs are worked out by combining the number of years of life lost due to an early death and the number of years a person has lived with a disability.

Almost 300 conditions were looked at as part of the global study and among these, low back pain was at number one in terms of lost years to disability. In relation to DALYs, low back pain came in sixth.

In fact, low back pain was found to be the greatest contributor to disability in 12 of the 21 world regions. It was also found to be the greatest contributor to overall burden in western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia.

Overall, the prevalence of low back pain was highest in western Europe and lowest in the Caribbean and Latin America.

"With ageing populations throughout the world, but especially in low and middle income countries, the number of people living with low back pain will increase substantially over coming decades. Governments, health service and research providers and donors need to pay far greater attention to the burden that low back pain causes than what they had done previously," the researchers concluded.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.