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-developed the doctoral program in biostatistics; co-directed the biostatistics program from 2000-2004, and served as Associate Chair for Education from 2015-2018. She formerly taught and coordinated the sections of Introduction to Statistical Computing. For more than twenty-five 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 and PET 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. Dr. Beiser 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 relate documented parental dementia and stroke to offspring stroke, cognitive performance, and MRI measures of brain structure. In investigations of clinical neurological endpoints, she has applied competing risk analyses and has also been able to investigate temporal trends in prevalent and incident neurological disease due to the availability of event surveillance over many decades. 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 Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
- Investigator, Framingham Heart Study
- Associate Chair, Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health
- Boston Medical Center
Websites
Education
- Boston University, PhD
- University of California, San Diego, MA
- University of California, Santa Cruz, BA
Publications
- Published on 4/2/2024
Kelly DM, Pinheiro AA, Koini M, Anderson CD, Aparicio H, Hofer E, Kern D, Blacker D, DeCarli C, Hwang SJ, Viswanathan A, Gonzales MM, Beiser AS, Seshadri S, Schmidt R, Demissie S, Romero JR. Impaired Kidney Function, Cerebral Small Vessel Disease and Cognitive Disorders: The Framingham Heart Study. Nephrol Dial Transplant. 2024 Apr 02. PMID: 38565317.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/25/2024
DeCarli C, Maillard P, Pase MP, Beiser AS, Kojis D, Satizabal CL, Himali JJ, Aparicio HJ, Fletcher E, Seshadri S. Trends in Intracranial and Cerebral Volumes of Framingham Heart Study Participants Born 1930 to 1970. JAMA Neurol. 2024 Mar 25. PMID: 38526486.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/12/2024
Weinstein G, Kojis DJ, Ghosh S, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. Association of Neurotrophic Factors at Midlife With In Vivo Measures of ß-Amyloid and Tau Burden 15 Years Later in Dementia-Free Adults. Neurology. 2024 Apr 09; 102(7):e209198. PMID: 38471064.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 1/30/2024
Pase MP, Himali JJ, Puerta R, Beiser AS, Gonzales MM, Satizabal CL, Yang Q, Aparicio HJ, Kojis DJ, Decarli CS, Lopez OL, Longstreth W, Gudnason V, Mosley TH, Bis JC, Fohner A, Psaty BM, Boada M, García-González P, Valero S, Marquié M, Tracy R, Launer LJ, Ruiz A, Fornage M, Seshadri S. Association of Plasma YKL-40 With MRI, CSF, and Cognitive Markers of Brain Health and Dementia. Neurology. 2024 Feb 27; 102(4):e208075. PMID: 38290090.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/26/2023
Satizabal CL, Beiser AS, Fletcher E, Seshadri S, DeCarli C. A novel neuroimaging signature for ADRD risk stratification in the community. Alzheimers Dement. 2024 Mar; 20(3):1881-1893. PMID: 38147416.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/13/2023
Baril AA, Kojis DJ, Himali JJ, Decarli CS, Sanchez E, Johnson KA, El Fakhri G, Thibault E, Yiallourou SR, Himali D, Cavuoto MG, Pase MP, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. Association of Sleep Duration and Change Over Time With Imaging Biomarkers of Cerebrovascular, Amyloid, Tau, and Neurodegenerative Pathology. Neurology. 2024 Jan 09; 102(1):e207807. PMID: 38165370.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/1/2023
Liu M, Khasiyev F, Sariya S, Spagnolo-Allende A, Sanchez DL, Andrews H, Yang Q, Beiser A, Qiao Y, Thomas EA, Romero JR, Rundek T, Brickman AM, Manly JJ, Elkind MS, Seshadri S, Chen C, Hilal S, Wasserman BA, Tosto G, Fornage M, Gutierrez J. Chromosome 10q24.32 Variants Associate With Brain Arterial Diameters in Diverse Populations: A Genome-Wide Association Study. J Am Heart Assoc. 2023 Dec 05; 12(23):e030935. PMID: 38038215.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/1/2023
Himali JJ, Baril AA, Cavuoto MG, Yiallourou S, Wiedner CD, Himali D, DeCarli C, Redline S, Beiser AS, Seshadri S, Pase MP. Association Between Slow-Wave Sleep Loss and Incident Dementia. JAMA Neurol. 2023 Dec 01; 80(12):1326-1333. PMID: 37902739.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 11/7/2023
Lary CW, Ghatan S, Gerety M, Hinton A, Nagarajan A, Rosen C, Ross RD, Bennett DA, DeStefano AL, Ikram MA, Rivadeneira F, Kiel DP, Seshadri S, Beiser A. Bone mineral density and the risk of incident dementia: A meta-analysis. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2024 Jan; 72(1):194-200. PMID: 37933827.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 11/3/2023
Tin A, Fohner AE, Yang Q, Brody JA, Davies G, Yao J, Liu D, Caro I, Lindbohm JV, Duggan MR, Meirelles O, Harris SE, Gudmundsdottir V, Taylor AM, Henry A, Beiser AS, Shojaie A, Coors A, Fitzpatrick AL, Langenberg C, Satizabal CL, Sitlani CM, Wheeler E, Tucker-Drob EM, Bressler J, Coresh J, Bis JC, Candia J, Jennings LL, Pietzner M, Lathrop M, Lopez OL, Redmond P, Gerszten RE, Rich SS, Heckbert SR, Austin TR, Hughes TM, Tanaka T, Emilsson V, Vasan RS, Guo X, Zhu Y, Tzourio C, Rotter JI, Walker KA, Ferrucci L, Kivimäki M, Breteler MMB, Cox SR, Debette S, Mosley TH, Gudnason VG, Launer LJ, Psaty BM, Seshadri S, Fornage M. Identification of circulating proteins associated with general cognitive function among middle-aged and older adults. Commun Biol. 2023 Nov 03; 6(1):1117. PMID: 37923804.
Read at: PubMed
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