Oveisgharan S, Yu L, Poole VN, et al. - Findings showed more rapid progressive parkinsonism in relation to higher levels of both white matter hyperintensity (WMH) and indices of cerebrovascular disease pathologies in aging brains.

• This is a cohort study of 516 decedents [mean (SD) age at death was 90.2 (6.4) years] to investigate whether the burden of cerebral WMH is related to the rate of progressive parkinsonism.

• Higher WMH was found to be linked with faster progressive parkinsonism (estimate, 0.024; SE, 0.008; P = .002).

• This relationship attenuated to a greater extent when controlling for indices of cerebrovascular disease pathologies vs when controlling for neurodegenerative pathologies (cerebrovascular disease: estimate, 0.019; neurodegenerative: estimate, 0.022), but both continued to be significant.