PORPOSE: to investigate the relationship between body posture and prosody in patients with Parkinson Disease. METHODS: the study was carried out with five patients (four males and one female) from Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, by means of cross-section study, in 2006. Evaluations of linguistic and emotional prosody as well as analysis of body posture were carried out. The statistical analysis was descriptive. RESULTS: the subjects of this study were four men and one woman aged between 37 and 53 years. Three of these patients were classified in stage I of the disease; one in the stage III and the other one in the stage IV, according to the classification of Hohen & Yahr motor function. All of them were under medication and presenting the signals of the characteristic triad of such pathology: rigidity, tremor and bradykinesia, as well as the typical alterations of body posture. In the comparison between linguistic prosody and emotional prosody, subjects showed the best performance in emotional prosody and no associations among the stages of the disease and the alterations on body posture and prosody were evidenced. CONCLUSION: body posture alterations are the characteristic signals of Parkinson Disease as well as the disorders related to linguistic and emotional prosody. The occurrence of posture alterations was high in patients with Parkinson disease. Subjects showed better performance in emotional prosody. There were no evidences that the stages of the disease were related to prosody or body posture alterations.
Cross-Sectional Studies; Parkinson Disease; Posture; Physical Therapy Modalities; Speech Therapy
