Alexa S. Beiser, PhD

Professor, Boston University School of Public Health

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.

Publications

  • Published 5/16/2025

    Yiallourou S, Baril AA, Wiedner C, Misialek JR, Kline CE, Harrison S, Cannon E, Yang Q, Bernal R, Bisson A, Himali D, Cavuoto M, Weihs A, Beiser A, Gottesman RF, Leng Y, Lopez O, Lutsey PL, Purcell SM, Redline S, Seshadri S, Stone KL, Yaffe K, Ancoli-Israel S, Xiao Q, Vaou EO, Himali JJ, Pase MP. Sleep architecture and dementia risk in adults: An analysis of 5 cohorts from the Sleep and Dementia Consortium. Sleep. 2025 May 16. PMID: 40377976.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/16/2025

    Lo J, Melhorn SJ, Kee S, Olerich KLW, Huang A, Yeum D, Beiser A, Seshadri S, DeCarli C, Schur EA. Hypothalamic Gliosis Is Associated With Multiple Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in the Framingham Heart Study. J Am Heart Assoc. 2025 Apr 16; e039463. PMID: 40240914.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/1/2025

    Grasset L, Bis JC, Frenzel S, Kojis D, Simino J, Yaqub A, Beiser A, Berr C, Bressler J, Bülow R, DeCarli CS, Fohner AE, Harrington LB, Helmer C, Ikram MA, Lemaitre RN, Lopez OL, Longstreth WT, Neitzel J, Odden MC, Palta P, Schmidt CO, Talluri R, Vernooij MW, Völzke H, Voortman T, Whalen Q, Wittfeld K, Grabe HJ, Mosley TH, Psaty BM, Wolters FJ, Seshadri S, Dufouil C. Selected social and lifestyle correlates of brain health markers: the Cross-Cohort Collaboration Consortium. Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Apr; 21(4):e70148. PMID: 40207408.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/1/2025

    Young VM, Bernal R, Baril AA, Zeynoun J, Wiedner C, Gaona C, Beiser A, Teixeira AL, Salardini A, Pase MP, Himali JJ, Seshadri S. Long sleep duration, cognitive performance, and the moderating role of depression: A cross-sectional analysis in the Framingham Heart Study. Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Apr; 21(4):e70160. PMID: 40257009.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 4/1/2025

    Salardini A, Himali JJ, Abdullah MS, Chaudhari R, Young V, Zilli EM, McGrath ER, Gonzales MM, Thibault EG, Salinas J, Aparicio HJ, Himali D, Ghosh S, Buckley RF, Satizabal CL, Johnson KA, DeCarli C, Fakhri GE, Vasan RS, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. Elevated serum cortisol associated with early-detected increase of brain amyloid deposition in Alzheimer's disease imaging biomarkers among menopausal women: The Framingham Heart Study. Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Apr; 21(4):e70179. PMID: 40271551.

    Read at: PubMed

View All 424 Publications:   View Full Profile in BUMC

Other Positions

  • Professor, Neurology
    Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
  • Investigator
    Framingham Heart Study
  • Associate Chair, Biostatistics
    Boston University School of Public Health

Websites

Education

  • Boston University, PhD
  • University of California, San Diego, MA
  • University of California, Santa Cruz, BA

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