Supporting people to self-manage their low back pain (LBP) is an important aspect of treatment. Delivery of personalized or tailored support via smartphone apps has shown promising results in reducing both pain and disability in people experiencing LBP. These apps have been mostly tested on middle-aged and well-educated women and we do not know if other groups have the same benefits. To be able to recommend self-management apps for people with LBP, it is important to identify sub-groups that may experience particularly favorable effects of such interventions, or alternatively, sub-groups without benefit or who may experience worse outcomes. In this study we wanted to examine if the effect of tailored support via a smartphone app (selfBACK) on LBP related disability was modified by age, gender and education. Our analysis showed that age, gender, or education did not impact the effect of the selfBACK intervention. However, older participants may have an additional long-term positive effect compared to younger participants. This suggests that the selfBACK intervention may benefit all persons seeking care for LBP in primary care regardless of their age, gender, and education, and be a helpful tool for clinicians and patients to support self-management of LBP.
