Alexa S. Beiser, PhD
Professor, Biostatistics
Biography
Alexa Beiser has been on the faculty at Boston University School of Public Health since 1985, engaged in teaching and collaborative public health research; she co-directed the biostatistics program from 2000-2004, and is currently Associate Chair for Education. She formerly taught and now coordinates the sections of Introduction to Statistical Computing. For more than twenty years, Dr. Beiser has served as the lead biostatistician for the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) neurology group, examining risk factors and prevalence and incidence of clinical and sub-clinical neurological outcomes including MRI measures of brain structure, cognitive performance, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and epilepsy. Dr. Beiser currently leads the FHS neurology group data management team, responsible for surveillance and tracking of incident dementia, for supervision of recruitment of participants for various grant funded studies, and for management of data collected at FHS as well as those measured or processed at other institutions (e.g., brain MRI or PET scans); and the FHS neurology group biostatistics team of six biostatisticians. Decades of examining risk factors for neurological diseases has naturally led to studying factors associated with accelerated brain aging. She has coauthored FHS publications relating risk factors including midlife vascular factors, plasma homocysteine, plasma leptin levels, cardiac index, red blood cell omega-3 fatty acids, metabolic dysregulation, visceral fat, air pollution; serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor; and insulin-like growth factor 1, to measures of brain aging. Dr. Beiser also has made use of the richness of the multigenerational Framingham data to examine temporal trends in prevalent and incident neurological disease and to relate documented parental dementia and stroke to offspring stroke, cognitive performance and MRI measures of brain structure. In all these studies, Dr. Beiser plays a key role in project conceptualization, is responsible for supervision of statistical data management, analysis, and interpretation of results, and contributes to manuscript preparation and critical review.
Other Positions
- Professor, Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine
- Associate Chair, Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health
- Boston Medical Center
- Framingham Heart Study
Websites
Education
- Boston University, PhD
- University of California, San Diego, MA
- University of California, Santa Cruz, BA
Publications
- Published on 4/5/2019
Spartano NL, Davis-Plourde KL, Himali JJ, Andersson C, Pase MP, Maillard P, DeCarli C, Murabito JM, Beiser AS, Vasan RS, Seshadri S. Association of Accelerometer-Measured Light-Intensity Physical Activity With Brain Volume: The Framingham Heart Study. JAMA Netw Open. 2019 Apr 05; 2(4):e192745. PMID: 31002329.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/4/2019
McGrath ER, Himali JJ, Levy D, Conner SC, Pase MP, Abraham CR, Courchesne P, Satizabal CL, Vasan RS, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. Circulating fibroblast growth factor 23 levels and incident dementia: The Framingham heart study. PLoS One. 2019; 14(3):e0213321. PMID: 30830941.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/4/2019
Pase MP, Beiser AS, Himali JJ, Satizabal CL, Aparicio HJ, DeCarli C, Chêne G, Dufouil C, Seshadri S. Assessment of Plasma Total Tau Level as a Predictive Biomarker for Dementia and Related Endophenotypes. JAMA Neurol. 2019 Mar 04. PMID: 30830207.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 2/28/2019
Kunkle BW, Grenier-Boley B, Sims R, Bis JC, Damotte V, Naj AC, Boland A, Vronskaya M, van der Lee SJ, Amlie-Wolf A, Bellenguez C, Frizatti A, Chouraki V, Martin ER, Sleegers K, Badarinarayan N, Jakobsdottir J, Hamilton-Nelson KL, Moreno-Grau S, Olaso R, Raybould R, Chen Y, Kuzma AB, Hiltunen M, Morgan T, Ahmad S, Vardarajan BN, Epelbaum J, Hoffmann P, Boada M, Beecham GW, Garnier JG, Harold D, Fitzpatrick AL, Valladares O, Moutet ML, Gerrish A, Smith AV, Qu L, Bacq D, Denning N, Jian X, Zhao Y, Del Zompo M, Fox NC, Choi SH, Mateo I, Hughes JT, Adams HH, Malamon J, Sanchez-Garcia F, Patel Y, Brody JA, Dombroski BA, Naranjo MCD, Daniilidou M, Eiriksdottir G, Mukherjee S, Wallon D, Uphill J, Aspelund T, Cantwell LB, Garzia F, Galimberti D, Hofer E, Butkiewicz M, Fin B, Scarpini E, Sarnowski C, Bush WS, Meslage S, Kornhuber J, White CC, Song Y, Barber RC, Engelborghs S, Sordon S, Voijnovic D, Adams PM, Vandenberghe R, Mayhaus M, Cupples LA, Albert MS, De Deyn PP, Gu W, Himali JJ, Beekly D, Squassina A, Hartmann AM, Orellana A, Blacker D, Rodriguez-Rodriguez E, Lovestone S, Garcia ME, Doody RS, Munoz-Fernadez C, Sussams R, Lin H, Fairchild TJ, Benito YA, Holmes C, Karamujic-Comic H, Frosch MP, Thonberg H, Maier W, Roschupkin G, Ghetti B, Giedraitis V, Kawalia A, Li S, Huebinger RM, Kilander L, Moebus S, Hernández I, Kamboh MI, Brundin R, Turton J, Yang Q, Katz MJ, Concari L, Lord J, Beiser AS, Keene CD, Helisalmi S, Kloszewska I, Kukull WA, Koivisto AM, Lynch A, Tarraga L, Larson EB, Haapasalo A, Lawlor B, Mosley TH, Lipton RB, Solfrizzi V, Gill M, Longstreth WT, Montine TJ, Frisardi V, Diez-Fairen M, Rivadeneira F, Petersen RC, Deramecourt V, Alvarez I, Salani F, Ciaramella A, Boerwinkle E, Reiman EM, Fievet N, Rotter JI, Reisch JS, Hanon O, Cupidi C, Andre Uitterlinden AG, Royall DR, Dufouil C, Maletta RG, de Rojas I, Sano M, Brice A, Cecchetti R, George-Hyslop PS, Ritchie K, Tsolaki M, Tsuang DW, Dubois B, Craig D, Wu CK, Soininen H, Avramidou D, Albin RL, Fratiglioni L, Germanou A, Apostolova LG, Keller L, Koutroumani M, Arnold SE, Panza F, Gkatzima O, Asthana S, Hannequin D, Whitehead P, Atwood CS, Caffarra P, Hampel H, Quintela I, Carracedo Á, Lannfelt L, Rubinsztein DC, Barnes LL, Pasquier F, Frölich L, Barral S, McGuinness B, Beach TG, Johnston JA, Becker JT, Passmore P, Bigio EH, Schott JM, Bird TD, Warren JD, Boeve BF, Lupton MK, Bowen JD, Proitsi P, Boxer A, Powell JF, Burke JR, Kauwe JSK, Burns JM, Mancuso M, Buxbaum JD, Bonuccelli U, Cairns NJ, McQuillin A, Cao C, Livingston G, Carlson CS, Bass NJ, Carlsson CM, Hardy J, Carney RM, Bras J, Carrasquillo MM, Guerreiro R, Allen M, Chui HC, Fisher E, Masullo C, Crocco EA, DeCarli C, Bisceglio G, Dick M, Ma L, Duara R, Graff-Radford NR, Evans DA, Hodges A, Faber KM, Scherer M, Fallon KB, Riemenschneider M, Fardo DW, Heun R, Farlow MR, Kölsch H, Ferris S, Leber M, Foroud TM, Heuser I, Galasko DR, Giegling I, Gearing M, Hüll M, Geschwind DH, Gilbert JR, Morris J, Green RC, Mayo K, Growdon JH, Feulner T, Hamilton RL, Harrell LE, Drichel D, Honig LS, Cushion TD, Huentelman MJ, Hollingworth P, Hulette CM, Hyman BT, Marshall R, Jarvik GP, Meggy A, Abner E, Menzies GE, Jin LW, Leonenko G, Real LM, Jun GR, Baldwin CT, Grozeva D, Karydas A, Russo G, Kaye JA, Kim R, Jessen F, Kowall NW, Vellas B, Kramer JH, Vardy E, LaFerla FM, Jöckel KH, Lah JJ, Dichgans M, Leverenz JB, Mann D, Levey AI, Pickering-Brown S, Lieberman AP, Klopp N, Lunetta KL, Wichmann HE, Lyketsos CG, Morgan K, Marson DC, Brown K, Martiniuk F, Medway C, Mash DC, Nöthen MM, Masliah E, Hooper NM, McCormick WC, Daniele A, McCurry SM, Bayer A, McDavid AN, Gallacher J, McKee AC, van den Bussche H, Mesulam M, Brayne C, Miller BL, Riedel-Heller S, Miller CA, Miller JW, Al-Chalabi A, Morris JC, Shaw CE, Myers AJ, Wiltfang J, O'Bryant S, Olichney JM, Alvarez V, Parisi JE, Singleton AB, Paulson HL, Collinge J, Perry WR, Mead S, Peskind E, Cribbs DH, Rossor M, Pierce A, Ryan NS, Poon WW, Nacmias B, Potter H, Sorbi S, et al. Genetic meta-analysis of diagnosed Alzheimer's disease identifies new risk loci and implicates Aß, tau, immunity and lipid processing. Nat Genet. 2019 03; 51(3):414-430. PMID: 30820047.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 2/15/2019
Weinstein G, Davis-Plourde KL, Conner S, Himali JJ, Beiser AS, Lee A, Rawlings AM, Sedaghat S, Ding J, Moshier E, van Duijn CM, Beeri MS, Selvin E, Ikram MA, Launer LJ, Haan MN, Seshadri S. Association of metformin, sulfonylurea and insulin use with brain structure and function and risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease: Pooled analysis from 5 cohorts. PLoS One. 2019; 14(2):e0212293. PMID: 30768625.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 2/1/2019
Yakushiji Y, Wilson D, Ambler G, Charidimou A, Beiser A, van Buchem MA, DeCarli C, Ding D, Gudnason V, Hara H, Imaizumi T, Kohara K, Kwon HM, Launer LJ, Mok V, Phan T, Preis SR, Romero JR, Seshadri S, Srikanth V, Takashima Y, Tsushima Y, Wang Z, Wolf PA, Xiong Y, Yamaguchi S, Werring DJ. Distribution of cerebral microbleeds in the East and West: Individual participant meta-analysis. Neurology. 2019 Mar 05; 92(10):e1086-e1097. PMID: 30709966.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 1/9/2019
Spartano NL, Davis-Plourde KL, Himali JJ, Murabito JM, Vasan RS, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. Self-Reported Physical Activity and Relations to Growth and Neurotrophic Factors in Diabetes Mellitus: The Framingham Offspring Study. J Diabetes Res. 2019; 2019:2718465. PMID: 30729134.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 1/1/2019
Conner SC, Benayoun L, Himali JJ, Adams SL, Yang Q, DeCarli C, Blusztajn JK, Beiser A, Seshadri S, Delalle I. Methionine Sulfoxide Reductase-B3 Risk Allele Implicated in Alzheimer's Disease Associates with Increased Odds for Brain Infarcts. J Alzheimers Dis. 2019; 68(1):357-365. PMID: 30775993.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/1/2018
Satizabal CL, Samieri C, Davis-Plourde KL, Voetsch B, Aparicio HJ, Pase MP, Romero JR, Helmer C, Vasan RS, Kase CS, Debette S, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. APOE and the Association of Fatty Acids With the Risk of Stroke, Coronary Heart Disease, and Mortality. Stroke. 2018 Dec; 49(12):2822-2829. PMID: 30571417.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 10/24/2018
Echouffo-Tcheugui JB, Conner SC, Himali JJ, Maillard P, DeCarli CS, Beiser AS, Vasan RS, Seshadri S. Circulating cortisol and cognitive and structural brain measures: The Framingham Heart Study. Neurology. 2018 Nov 20; 91(21):e1961-e1970. PMID: 30355700.
Read at: PubMed
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