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Alexa S. Beiser, PhD

Professor, Biostatistics - Boston University School of Public Health

617-358-2515
alexab@bu.edu
Crosstown Center - 3rd Floor
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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

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

Education

  • Boston University, PhD Field of Study: Mathematics
  • University of California, San Diego, MA Field of Study: Applied Mathematics
  • University of California, Santa Cruz, BA Field of Study: Biology/Psychology

Websites

Publications

  • Published on 1/27/2025

    Birkenbihl C, Cuppels M, Boyle RT, Klinger HM, Langford O, Coughlan GT, Properzi MJ, Chhatwal J, Price JC, Schultz AP, Rentz DM, Amariglio RE, Johnson KA, Gottesman RF, Mukherjee S, Maruff P, Lim YY, Masters CL, Beiser A, Resnick SM, Hughes TM, Burnham S, Tunali I, Landau S, Cohen AD, Johnson SC, Betthauser TJ, Seshadri S, Lockhart SN, O'Bryant SE, Vemuri P, Sperling RA, Hohman TJ, Donohue MC, Buckley RF. Rethinking the residual approach: leveraging statistical learning to operationalize cognitive resilience in Alzheimer's disease. Brain Inform. 2025 Jan 27; 12(1):3. PMID: 39871006.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 1/6/2025

    Vered S, Beiser AS, Sulimani L, Sznitman S, Ghosh S, Lewitus GM, Meiri D, Seshadri S, Weinstein G. Circulating Endocannabinoids and Cognitive Function in Older Adults. Aging Dis. 2025 Jan 06. PMID: 39812547.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 1/1/2025

    Charisis S, Mourtzi N, Scott MR, Ntanasi E, Mamalaki E, Hatzimanolis A, Ramirez A, Lambert JC, Yannakoulia M, Kosmidis M, Dardiotis E, Hadjigeorgiou G, Sakka P, Satizabal CL, Beiser A, Yang Q, Georgakis M?, Seshadri S, Scarmeas N. Genetic predisposition to high circulating levels of interleukin 6 and risk for Alzheimer's disease. Discovery and replication. J Prev Alzheimers Dis. 2025 Jan; 12(1):100018. PMID: 39800457.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 1/1/2025

    Weinstein G, Kojis D, Banerjee A, Seshadri S, Walker M, Beiser AS. Ultra-processed food consumption and risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease: The Framingham Heart Study. J Prev Alzheimers Dis. 2025 Feb; 12(2):100042. PMID: 39863327.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 12/30/2024

    Liu X, Maillard P, Barisano G, Caprihan A, Cen S, Shao X, Jann K, Ringman JM, Lu H, Arfanakis K, DeCarli CS, Gold BT, Seshadri S, Satizabal CL, Beiser AS, Habes M, Kramer JH, Stables L, Singh H, Helmer KG, Greenberg SM, Wang DJJ. MRI free water mediates the association between diffusion tensor image analysis along the perivascular space and executive function in four independent middle to aged cohorts. Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Feb; 21(2):e14453. PMID: 39740225.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 12/6/2024

    van Lent DM, Mesa HG, Short MI, Gonzales MM, Aparicio HJ, Salinas J, Yuan C, Jacques PF, Beiser A, Seshadri S, Jacob ME, Himali JJ. Association between dietary inflammatory index score and incident dementia. Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Jan; 21(1):e14390. PMID: 39641390.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 12/3/2024

    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. medRxiv. 2024 Dec 03. PMID: 39677456.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 11/28/2024

    van Lent DM, Jacques PF, Charisis SM, Mesa HG, Satizabal C, Yuan C, Vasan RS, Seshadri S, Beiser A, Himali JJ, Jacob ME. Dietary inflammatory index scores and cognitive aging: results from the Framingham heart Study offspring cohort. medRxiv. 2024 Nov 28. PMID: 39649578.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 11/21/2024

    Luckey AM, Ghosh S, Wang CP, Beiser A, Bernal R, Li Z, Mbangdadji D, Fadaee E, Snoussi H, Dediós AGV, Trevino HA, Goss M, Hillmer LJ, Bauer CE, Staffaroni AM, Stables L, Albert M, Himali JJ, Mosley TH, Forsberg L, Guðnason V, Singh B, Singh H, Schwab K, Kramer JH, Rosenberg GA, Helmer KG, Greenberg SM, Habes M, Wang DJJ, Gold BT, Lu H, Caprihan A, Fornage M, Launer LJ, Arfanakis K, Seshadri S, DeCarli C, Maillard P, Satizabal CL. Biological validation of peak-width of skeletonized mean diffusivity as a VCID biomarker: The MarkVCID Consortium. Alzheimers Dement. 2024 Dec; 20(12):8814-8824. PMID: 39569745.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 11/20/2024

    de Kort FAS, Vinke EJ, van der Lelij EJ, Anblagan D, Bastin ME, Beiser A, Brodaty H, Chaturvedi N, Cheng B, Cox SR, DeCarli C, Enzinger C, Fletcher E, Frayne R, de Groot M, Huang F, Ikram MA, Jiang J, Lam BYK, Maillard P, Mayer C, McCreary CR, Mok V, Maniega SM, Petersen M, Roshchupkin G, Sachdev PS, Schmidt R, Seiler S, Seshadri S, Sudre CH, Thomalla G, Twerenbold R, Valdés Hernández M, Vernooij MW, Wardlaw JM, Wen W, Kuijf HJ, Biessels GJ, Biesbroek JM. Cerebral white matter hyperintensity volumes: Normative age- and sex-specific values from 15 population-based cohorts comprising 14,876 individuals. Neurobiol Aging. 2025 Feb; 146:38-47. PMID: 39602940.

     Read At: PubMed

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