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Assessing muscle stiffness from quiet stance in Parkinson's disease. In previous studies, we developed a postural stiffness measure that is extracted from foot center-of-pressure (COP) trajectories from quietly standing individuals and is based on an analytical mechanical model of posture control. Here we apply this measure to patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). We correlated the postural stiffness measure with different clinical rating scales, obtained from patients. Kendall's rank correlation was highly significant between the stiffness measure and rigidity, bradykinesia, posture impairment, gait, and leg agility, respectively, as rated by the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale. These results provide further evidence that a higher intrinsic muscle stiffness may contribute to the aforementioned clinically defined symptoms. From a clinical standpoint, this work indicates that the proposed postural stiffness measure may be useful as an assessment tool for the evaluation of PD patients subsequent to pharmacological and surgical treatment. Muscle Nerve 1999 May;22(5):635-9 Lauk M, Chow CC, Lipsitz LA, Mitchell SL, Collins JJ Center for BioDynamics, and Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Massachusetts 02215, USA. PMID: 10331364, UI: 99260207 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/ janet paterson 52 now / 41 dx / 37 onset snail-mail: PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada website: a new voice <http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/6263/> e-mail: <[log in to unmask]>