Body height loss characterizes camptocormia in Parkinson’s disease

Axial deformities such as camptocormia or Pisa syndrome in people with Parkinson’s disease (PwP) are poorly understood. The scarcity of information may result from the shortage of reliable and responsive evaluation instruments. We evaluated the body height loss (BHL) as a new measure for PwP with axial deformities. 50 PwP with axial deformity defined by an UPDRS item 28 value of at least 2 were included in this mono-center study. We measured body height while lying supine and after 1 min of standing, providing a percentage value of BHL, and compared this measure to other clinical variables. BHL depended on the Hoehn and Yahr clinical stage and correlated with clinical scales for function and mobility, but not with timely measures of the axial disorder such as age at diagnosis or duration of disease. ANOVA showed that only lumbar flexion explained the variability of BHL (F = 21.0, p < 0.0001), but not kyphosis (F = 0.4, p = 0.74) or lateroflexion (F = 0.6, p = 0.6). Re-test reliability of BHL was good with к = 0.76 (p < 0.0001). BHL resulted from the lumbar spine and the hip joint and not from the thoracic spine or lateroflexion. This observation conforms to the concept of upper-type and lower-type camptocormia with only the latter leading to a BHL. The assessment of the BHL is shown to be a well defined, easy to perform, and reliable measure for the clinical evaluation of lower-type camptocormia.