Introduction: Lumbar disc herniation (LDH) and clinical syndrome secondary to radiculopathy are the majors causes of morbidity and costs in world public health, with an estimated incidence between 1% and 2% in the population of the United States. Great influence of inheritance has been demonstrated in the development of disc degeneration. Collagen type XI alpha 1 (COL11a1) plays an important role in the structure of the disc, the matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP9) is involved in disc degradation, among others. MMPs are involved in physiological and pathological processes and are involved in the breakdown of the extracellular matrix (ECM), Objective: determine the relationship of metalloproteinases and lumbar disc herniation in workers. Materials and methods: a review of the scope of articles in the databases was carried out: Pubmed, Academic Search Complete, Web of science and proquest, in the period from 2008 to 2018, with the search terms: Metalloproteinase lumbar disc, occupational, workers and workloud, in English and Spanish, where sociodemographic, labor and those related to disc herniation were taken into account. Results: There is a higher relation of MMP-1 to its regulatory enzyme TIMP in patients over 60 years (p = 0.029) It was reported that exposure to full body vibration obtained an OR 8.96 (95% CI = 2.47–32.49) for the development of lumbar disc degeneration versus those without exposure. Conclusion: the metalloproteinases that have been most involved with the development of LDH are MMP-1, MMP-2 y MMP-3 and in realtion to work, the most associated polymorphisms were rs632478 and the 5A allele of MMP-3, in addition to the gene variant -735CC of the MMP-2 in works related to full body vibration and bending/twisting.
