Fig. 3

Burden of Alzheimer’s disease pathology in MAP participants and relation to clinical diagnoses. a Composite Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology values were estimated for each participant and plotted by clinical diagnosis criteria into no- (NCI, n = 90), or mild-cognitive impairment (MCI, n = 86), or dementia (DEM, n = 132). Whiskers represent 10th and 90th percentiles and boxes enclose interquartile ranges crossed by the median of Alzheimer’s disease pathology scores within groups. As expected, Kruskal-Wallis test detected differences on the accumulated Alzheimer’s disease pathology across clinical diagnoses (KW-statistic = 57.0, p < 0.001; Mean rank differences: NCI vs MCI = 30.7; NCI vs DEM = 88.7; MCI vs DEM = 58.0). ns, not significant, ***p < 0.001, Kruskal-Wallis followed by Dunn’s multiple comparison test. b Bubble plot illustrating the distribution of MAP participants across clinically diagnosed (NCI/MCI/DEM) and neuropathologically graded [by NIA/Reagan, CERAD (Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease), and Braak scales] groups