Figure 3. A higher burden of brain pathologies is related to more rapid progression of parkinsonism.

Model-derived trajectories of progressive parkinsonism for 5 average participants, an 89-year-old woman, with increasing weighted pathology scores derived from the associations between different postmortem indices and the rate of progressive parkinsonism. Since a higher global parkinsonism score (y-axis) represents more severe parkinsonism, the slope for more rapid progression is positive and larger. Slope values increase with a higher burden of pathology as illustrated by showing increasing weighted pathology scores and slope values: black line (no pathology, rate: 0.051/y); red line (25th percentile, weighted pathology score 0.316; rate: 0.101/y); green line (50th percentile weighted pathology score 0.483; rate: 0.130/y); blue line (75th percentile, weighted pathology score 0.678; rate: 0.159/y); and gray line (90th percentile weighted pathology score 0.868; rate: 0.189/y).