Lost in translation?

I have read with great interest the paper of Ghaffari et al. [1] ‘Effect of psychosocial factors on low back pain in industrial workers’. The Iranian prospective study confirms the aetiological role of job strain for low back pain (LBP). However, a rather surprising finding is reported, but not discussed: social support at the workplace apparently increases LBP prevalence. In logistic regression analyses, low support significantly reduces odds ratio for LBP, and iso-strain (that is, adding social isolation to job strain) protects workers from strain-related LBP. The questionnaire used, the Musculoskeletal Intervention Center inventory, in its original Swedish version had reversed Likert-type four-point scores [2]. I wonder if the sense of the support scale has been lost in translation or if the Iranian workers are different from all the workers in the world and suffer from social support at the workplace.