ABSTRACT
Low back pain (LBP) is closely related to intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) , spinal canal stenosis, intervertebral disc herniation, osteoarthritis of intervertebral facet joints, ligament and muscle lesions, among which IDD is the key factor causing low back pain. Emerging evidence suggests that a large number of pro-inflammatory cytokines are produced during IDD, and the inflammatory responses induced by these cytokines aggravate the occurrence and development of degeneration. At the molecular level, the mechanism of regulating intervertebral disc metabolism based on signal pathway has become a research hotspot, but the specific pathway mechanism is still unclear. In this paper, according to the crosstalk of NF-κB, TGF-β, MAPK, Wnt/β-catenin, PI3K/AKT/mTOR and other signal pathways, the positive and negative feedback effects of signal pathways on the inflammatory response during disc degeneration will be discussed. To elucidate the pro-inflammatory effects of NF-κB, anti-inflammatory effects of TGF-β and MAPK as well as the potential mechanisms of other pathways, we analyze the internal relationship between the mechanism of IDD and the signal pathway transduction, in order to provide new ideas for the treatment of IDD.