Alexa Beiser
Profiles

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 7/22/2024

    Gonzales MM, O'Donnell A, Ghosh S, Thibault E, Tanner J, Satizabal CL, Decarli CS, Fakhri GE, Johnson KA, Beiser AS, Seshadri S, Pase M. Associations of cerebral amyloid beta and tau with cognition from midlife. Alzheimers Dement. 2024 Jul 22. PMID: 39039896.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 7/1/2024

    Mukadam N, Wolters FJ, Walsh S, Wallace L, Brayne C, Matthews FE, Sacuiu S, Skoog I, Seshadri S, Beiser A, Ghosh S, Livingston G. Changes in prevalence and incidence of dementia and risk factors for dementia: an analysis from cohort studies. Lancet Public Health. 2024 Jul; 9(7):e443-e460. PMID: 38942556.

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

    Medved S, Salinas J, Kojis D, Weinstein G, Vasan RS, Beiser A, Seshadri S. The association between levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and comorbid depression in patients with cardiovascular disease: The Framingham Heart Study. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2024 Aug; 78(8):438-445. PMID: 38842141.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 5/3/2024

    Knol MJ, Poot RA, Evans TE, Satizabal CL, Mishra A, Sargurupremraj M, van der Auwera S, Duperron MG, Jian X, Hostettler IC, van Dam-Nolen DHK, Lamballais S, Pawlak MA, Lewis CE, Carrion-Castillo A, van Erp TGM, Reinbold CS, Shin J, Scholz M, Håberg AK, Kämpe A, Li GHY, Avinun R, Atkins JR, Hsu FC, Amod AR, Lam M, Tsuchida A, Teunissen MWA, Aygün N, Patel Y, Liang D, Beiser AS, Beyer F, Bis JC, Bos D, Bryan RN, Bülow R, Caspers S, Catheline G, Cecil CAM, Dalvie S, Dartigues JF, DeCarli C, Enlund-Cerullo M, Ford JM, Franke B, Freedman BI, Friedrich N, Green MJ, Haworth S, Helmer C, Hoffmann P, Homuth G, Ikram MK, Jack CR, Jahanshad N, Jockwitz C, Kamatani Y, Knodt AR, Li S, Lim K, Longstreth WT, Macciardi F, Mäkitie O, Mazoyer B, Medland SE, Miyamoto S, Moebus S, Mosley TH, Muetzel R, Mühleisen TW, Nagata M, Nakahara S, Palmer ND, Pausova Z, Preda A, Quidé Y, Reay WR, Roshchupkin GV, Schmidt R, Schreiner PJ, Setoh K, Shapland CY, Sidney S, St Pourcain B, Stein JL, Tabara Y, Teumer A, Uhlmann A, van der Lugt A, Vernooij MW, Werring DJ, Windham BG, Witte AV, Wittfeld K, Yang Q, Yoshida K, Brunner HG, Le Grand Q, Sim K, Stein DJ, Bowden DW, Cairns MJ, Hariri AR, Cheung CL, Andersson S, Villringer A, Paus T, Cichon S, Calhoun VD, Crivello F, Launer LJ, White T, Koudstaal PJ, Houlden H, Fornage M, Matsuda F, Grabe HJ, Ikram MA, Debette S, Thompson PM, Seshadri S, Adams HHH. Genetic variants for head size share genes and pathways with cancer. Cell Rep Med. 2024 May 21; 5(5):101529. PMID: 38703765.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 5/1/2024

    Martirosian RA, Wiedner CD, Sanchez J, Mun KT, Marla K, Teran C, Thirion M, Liebeskind DS, McGrath ER, Zucker JM, Bernal R, Beiser AS, DeCarli C, Himali JJ, Seshadri S, Hinman JD. Association of Incident Stroke Risk With an IL-18-Centered Inflammatory Network Biomarker Composite. Stroke. 2024 Jun; 55(6):1601-1608. PMID: 38690658.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 5/1/2024

    Levine DA, Whitney RT, Ye W, Briceño EM, Gross AL, Giordani BJ, Sussman JB, Lazar RM, Howard VJ, Aparicio HJ, Beiser AS, Elkind MSV, Gottesman RF, Koton S, Pendlebury ST, Kollipara AS, Springer MV, Seshadri S, Romero JR, Fitzpatrick AL, Longstreth WT, Hayward RA. Associations Between Stroke Type, Ischemic Stroke Subtypes, and Post-Stroke Cognitive Trajectories. medRxiv. 2024 May 01. PMID: 38903102.

     Read At: PubMed
  • Published on 5/1/2024

    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 May 01; 81(5):471-480. PMID: 38526486.

     Read At: PubMed
  • 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 3/12/2024

    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

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