Alexa S. Beiser, PhD
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, Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health
- Professor, Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine
- Associate Chair, Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health
- Investigator, Framingham Heart Study
Websites
Education
- Boston University, PhD
- University of California, San Diego, MA
- University of California, Santa Cruz, BA
Publications
- Published on 4/14/2020
Baradaran H, Demissie S, Himali JJ, Beiser A, Gupta A, Polak JF, DeCarli C, Seshadri S, Romero JR. The progression of carotid atherosclerosis and imaging markers of dementia. Alzheimers Dement (N Y). 2020; 6(1):e12015. PMID: 32296732.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 1/16/2020
McGrath ER, Himali JJ, Xanthakis V, Duncan MS, Schaffer JE, Ory DS, Peterson LR, DeCarli C, Pase MP, Satizabal CL, Vasan RS, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. Circulating ceramide ratios and risk of vascular brain aging and dementia. Ann Clin Transl Neurol. 2020 02; 7(2):160-168. PMID: 31950603.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 1/3/2020
Lee CM, Woodward M, Batty GD, Beiser AS, Bell S, Berr C, Bjertness E, Chalmers J, Clarke R, Dartigues JF, Davis-Plourde K, Debette S, Di Angelantonio E, Feart C, Frikke-Schmidt R, Gregson J, Haan MN, Hassing LB, Hayden KM, Hoevenaar-Blom MP, Kaprio J, Kivimaki M, Lappas G, Larson EB, LeBlanc ES, Lee A, Lui LY, Moll van Charante EP, Ninomiya T, Nordestgaard LT, Ohara T, Ohkuma T, Palviainen T, Peres K, Peters R, Qizilbash N, Richard E, Rosengren A, Seshadri S, Shipley M, Singh-Manoux A, Strand BH, van Gool WA, Vuoksimaa E, Yaffe K, Huxley RR. Association of anthropometry and weight change with risk of dementia and its major subtypes: A meta-analysis consisting 2.8 million adults with 57 294 cases of dementia. Obes Rev. 2020 Apr; 21(4):e12989. PMID: 31898862.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/18/2019
Weinstein G, Davis-Plourde KL, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. Author response: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, liver fibrosis score and cognitive function in middle-aged adults: The Framingham study. Liver Int. 2020 May; 40(5):1240. PMID: 31850659.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/9/2019
Pase MP, Himali JJ, Beiser AS, DeCarli C, McGrath ER, Satizabal CL, Aparicio HJ, Adams HHH, Reiner AP, Longstreth WT, Fornage M, Tracy RP, Lopez O, Psaty BM, Levy D, Seshadri S, Bis JC. Association of CD14 with incident dementia and markers of brain aging and injury. Neurology. 2020 01 21; 94(3):e254-e266. PMID: 31818907.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 11/6/2019
Ding J, Davis-Plourde KL, Sedaghat S, Tully PJ, Wang W, Phillips C, Pase MP, Himali JJ, Gwen Windham B, Griswold M, Gottesman R, Mosley TH, White L, Guðnason V, Debette S, Beiser AS, Seshadri S, Ikram MA, Meirelles O, Tzourio C, Launer LJ. Antihypertensive medications and risk for incident dementia and Alzheimer's disease: a meta-analysis of individual participant data from prospective cohort studies. Lancet Neurol. 2020 Jan; 19(1):61-70. PMID: 31706889.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 11/5/2019
Conner SC, Pase MP, Carneiro H, Raman MR, McKee AC, Alvarez VE, Walker JM, Satizabal CL, Himali JJ, Stein TD, Beiser A, Seshadri S. Mid-life and late-life vascular risk factor burden and neuropathology in old age. Ann Clin Transl Neurol. 2019 12; 6(12):2403-2412. PMID: 31691546.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 11/5/2019
Aparicio HJ, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. Response by Aparicio et al to Letter Regarding Article, "Temporal Trends in Ischemic Stroke Incidence in Younger Adults in the Framingham Study". Stroke. 2019 12; 50(12):e425. PMID: 31684850.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 10/21/2019
Satizabal CL, Adams HHH, Hibar DP, White CC, Knol MJ, Stein JL, Scholz M, Sargurupremraj M, Jahanshad N, Roshchupkin GV, Smith AV, Bis JC, Jian X, Luciano M, Hofer E, Teumer A, van der Lee SJ, Yang J, Yanek LR, Lee TV, Li S, Hu Y, Koh JY, Eicher JD, Desrivières S, Arias-Vasquez A, Chauhan G, Athanasiu L, Rentería ME, Kim S, Hoehn D, Armstrong NJ, Chen Q, Holmes AJ, den Braber A, Kloszewska I, Andersson M, Espeseth T, Grimm O, Abramovic L, Alhusaini S, Milaneschi Y, Papmeyer M, Axelsson T, Ehrlich S, Roiz-Santiañez R, Kraemer B, Håberg AK, Jones HJ, Pike GB, Stein DJ, Stevens A, Bralten J, Vernooij MW, Harris TB, Filippi I, Witte AV, Guadalupe T, Wittfeld K, Mosley TH, Becker JT, Doan NT, Hagenaars SP, Saba Y, Cuellar-Partida G, Amin N, Hilal S, Nho K, Mirza-Schreiber N, Arfanakis K, Becker DM, Ames D, Goldman AL, Lee PH, Boomsma DI, Lovestone S, Giddaluru S, Le Hellard S, Mattheisen M, Bohlken MM, Kasperaviciute D, Schmaal L, Lawrie SM, Agartz I, Walton E, Tordesillas-Gutierrez D, Davies GE, Shin J, Ipser JC, Vinke LN, Hoogman M, Jia T, Burkhardt R, Klein M, Crivello F, Janowitz D, Carmichael O, Haukvik UK, Aribisala BS, Schmidt H, Strike LT, Cheng CY, Risacher SL, Pütz B, Fleischman DA, Assareh AA, Mattay VS, Buckner RL, Mecocci P, Dale AM, Cichon S, Boks MP, Matarin M, Penninx BWJH, Calhoun VD, Chakravarty MM, Marquand AF, Macare C, Kharabian Masouleh S, Oosterlaan J, Amouyel P, Hegenscheid K, Rotter JI, Schork AJ, Liewald DCM, de Zubicaray GI, Wong TY, Shen L, Sämann PG, Brodaty H, Roffman JL, de Geus EJC, Tsolaki M, Erk S, van Eijk KR, Cavalleri GL, van der Wee NJA, McIntosh AM, Gollub RL, Bulayeva KB, Bernard M, Richards JS, Himali JJ, Loeffler M, Rommelse N, Hoffmann W, Westlye LT, Valdés Hernández MC, Hansell NK, van Erp TGM, Wolf C, Kwok JBJ, Vellas B, Heinz A, Olde Loohuis LM, Delanty N, Ho BC, Ching CRK, Shumskaya E, Singh B, Hofman A, van der Meer D, Homuth G, Psaty BM, Bastin ME, Montgomery GW, Foroud TM, Reppermund S, Hottenga JJ, Simmons A, Meyer-Lindenberg A, Cahn W, Whelan CD, van Donkelaar MMJ, Yang Q, Hosten N, Green RC, Thalamuthu A, Mohnke S, Hulshoff Pol HE, Lin H, Jack CR, Schofield PR, Mühleisen TW, Maillard P, Potkin SG, Wen W, Fletcher E, Toga AW, Gruber O, Huentelman M, Davey Smith G, Launer LJ, Nyberg L, Jönsson EG, Crespo-Facorro B, Koen N, Greve DN, Uitterlinden AG, Weinberger DR, Steen VM, Fedko IO, Groenewold NA, Niessen WJ, Toro R, Tzourio C, Longstreth WT, Ikram MK, Smoller JW, van Tol MJ, Sussmann JE, Paus T, Lemaître H, Schroeter ML, Mazoyer B, Andreassen OA, Holsboer F, Depondt C, Veltman DJ, Turner JA, Pausova Z, Schumann G, van Rooij D, Djurovic S, Deary IJ, McMahon KL, Müller-Myhsok B, Brouwer RM, Soininen H, Pandolfo M, Wassink TH, Cheung JW, Wolfers T, Martinot JL, Zwiers MP, Nauck M, Melle I, Martin NG, Kanai R, Westman E, Kahn RS, Sisodiya SM, White T, Saremi A, van Bokhoven H, Brunner HG, Völzke H, Wright MJ, van 't Ent D, Nöthen MM, Ophoff RA, Buitelaar JK, Fernández G, Sachdev PS, Rietschel M, van Haren NEM, Fisher SE, Beiser AS, Francks C, Saykin AJ, Mather KA, Romanczuk-Seiferth N, Hartman CA, DeStefano AL, Heslenfeld DJ, Weiner MW, Walter H, Hoekstra PJ, Nyquist PA, Franke B, Bennett DA, Grabe HJ, Johnson AD, Chen C, van Duijn CM, Lopez OL, Fornage M, Wardlaw JM, Schmidt R, DeCarli C, De Jager PL, Villringer A, Debette S, Gudnason V, Medland SE, Shulman JM, Thompson PM, Seshadri S, Ikram MA. Genetic architecture of subcortical brain structures in 38,851 individuals. Nat Genet. 2019 11; 51(11):1624-1636. PMID: 31636452.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 10/15/2019
Spartano NL, Demissie S, Himali JJ, Dukes KA, Murabito JM, Vasan RS, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. Accelerometer-determined physical activity and cognitive function in middle-aged and older adults from two generations of the Framingham Heart Study. Alzheimers Dement (N Y). 2019; 5:618-626. PMID: 31660424.
Read at: PubMed
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