Squatting in skinny jeans for a long period of time has been linked to damage of the muscles and nerve fibres in the legs, health experts have warned.

Doctors have described the case of a 35-year-old woman who collapsed and spent several hours lying on the ground outside, unable to move, before spending four days in hospital.

The case study, which is published online in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, said she had spent the previous day helping a relative move house, and had spent a number of hours squatting as she emptied cupboards.

She had also been wearing tight skinny jeans and recalled that they had felt increasingly tight and uncomfortable as the day wore on.

Later that evening, she experienced numbness in her feet and found it difficult to walk, which caused her to trip and fall. Unable to get up, she then spent several hours lying on the ground before she was found.

The woman’s calves were so swollen that her jeans had to be cut off her and she could not move her ankles or toes properly and had lost feeling in her lower legs and feet.

Doctors found she had damaged muscle and nerve fibres in her lower legs as a result of prolonged compression while squatting, which they believed her tight jeans had made worse.

Her fashion choice had prompted the development of compartment syndrome, or reduced blood supply to the leg muscles, causing swelling of the muscles and compression of the adjacent nerves, they said.

She was put on an intravenous drip and was only able to walk unaided after four days.

Doctors said previous side-effects of wearing skinny jeans have been limited to lesions of the thigh, and this was the most serious incident they had heard of.

Associate professor Thomas Edmund Kimber, of the University of Adelaide in South Australia, said: “The present case represents a new neurological complication of wearing tight jeans.”

Priya Dasoju, professional adviser at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said: “As with many of these warnings, the very unfortunate case highlighted is an extreme one.

“There’s no need to ditch the skinny jeans just yet, simply avoid staying in the same position for too long and keep moving throughout the day. If you do suffer any prolonged pain you should of course seek help, but no one should be alarmed by this warning or change the cut of their jeans.”