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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

  • Professor, Neurology - Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
  • Investigator - Framingham Heart Study

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 1/20/2026

    Francis L, Beiser A, Lu S, Kujawa SG, Heard-Costa N, Kolo FB, Kamboh MI, Bernal R, Welling DB, Alcabes RL, Himali JJ, Seshadri S. Hearing loss in the young-old is associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia. J Alzheimers Dis. 2026 Feb; 109(3):1142-1148. PMID: 41555782.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 1/19/2026

    Romero JR, Pinheiro A, Demissie S, Aparicio HJ, Lioutas VA, Charidimou A, Beiser A, Ekenze O, Himali JJ, DeCarli C, Seshadri S, Mohammed S. Lifelong trajectories of modifiable vascular risk factors and relation to cerebral small vessel disease in the Framingham Heart Study. medRxiv. 2026 Jan 19. PMID: 41646706.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 12/16/2025

    Palatsides EL, Himali D, Cribb L, Peloso GM, Ryan J, Yang Q, DeCarli CS, Beiser AS, Seshadri S, Cavuoto MG, Yiallourou S, Baril AA, Himali JJ, Pase MP. Association of an Aquaporin-4 Haplotype with Cognition, Brain Volume, and Dementia Risk in Community-Dwelling Individuals without Dementia. medRxiv. 2025 Dec 16. PMID: 41445666.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 11/6/2025

    Pinheiro A, Aparicio H, Lioutas VA, Beiser A, Ekenze O, DeCarli C, Seshadri S, Demissie S, Romero JR. Higher Burden of Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Is Associated With Risk of Incident Stroke in Community-Dwelling Individuals. J Am Heart Assoc. 2025 Nov 18; 14(22):e040263. PMID: 41195792.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 10/2/2025

    Wadop YN, Bernal R, Njamnshi WY, Satizabal CL, Beiser A, Ruiz A, Njamnshi AK, Vasan RS, Seshadri S, Himali JJ, Fongang B. Altered gut microbiota mediates the association between APOE genotype and amyloid-ß accumulation in middle-aged adults. J Neurol. 2025 Oct 02; 272(10):670. PMID: 41037094.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 9/15/2025

    Pinheiro A, Ekenze O, Aparicio HJ, Beiser AS, Decarli CS, Demissie S, Seshadri S, Romero JR. Multimarker Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Score and Risk of Incident Dementia in the Framingham Heart Study. Neurology. 2025 Oct 07; 105(7):e214113. PMID: 40953349.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 9/9/2025

    McGrath ER, Scott MR, Buckley RF, Satizabal CL, Werry AE, DeCarli CS, Ghosh S, Vasan RS, Bhasin S, Murabito JM, Beiser AS, Seshadri S. The association between reproductive factors and neurocognitive and neuroimaging markers of brain aging. J Alzheimers Dis. 2025 Oct; 107(4):1594-1604. PMID: 40924581.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 9/9/2025

    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 Sep 09; 48(9). PMID: 40377976.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 9/3/2025

    Mulligan M, Beiser AS, O'Donnell A, Banerjee A, Ghosh S, Thibault E, El Fakhri G, Johnson KA, Seshadri S, McGrath ER. A steep decline in diastolic blood pressure over early to mid-life is associated with tau-PET burden in dementia-free adults. J Alzheimers Dis. 2025 Oct; 107(4):1674-1681. PMID: 40899927.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 8/24/2025

    Liu M, Khasiyev F, Spagnolo-Allende A, Sanchez DL, Andrews H, Yang Q, Beiser A, Qiao Y, Romero JR, Rundek T, Brickman AM, Manly JJ, Elkind MS, Seshadri S, Chen C, Del Brutto OH, Hilal S, Wasserman BA, Tosto G, Fornage M, Gutierrez J. Multi-population genome-wide association study identifies multiple novel loci associated with asymptomatic intracranial large artery stenosis. Int J Stroke. 2026 Apr; 21(4):515-525. PMID: 40851121.

     Read At: PubMed

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