
Alexa S. Beiser, PhD
Professor, Biostatistics - 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.
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 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 Sep 09; 13872877251372430. 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 Sep 03; 13872877251372561. 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. 2025 Aug 24; 17474930251374471. PMID: 40851121.
Read At: PubMed
- Published on 8/21/2025
Araujo-Contreras R, Pinheiro AA, Ekenze O, Sisto J, Aparicio HJ, Beiser A, Himali JJ, Lioutas V, DeCarli C, Seshadri S, Demissie S, Romero JR. Multi-marker cerebral small vessel disease score and risk of incident depression: The Framingham Heart Study. J Affect Disord. 2025 Aug 21; 392:120089. PMID: 40848767.
Read At: PubMed
- Published on 8/20/2025
Biesbroek JM, de Kort FAS, Anblagan D, Bastin ME, Beiser A, Brodaty H, Chaturvedi N, Chen CPLH, Cheng B, Cheng CY, Cox SR, DeCarli C, Enzinger C, Fletcher E, Frayne R, de Groot M, Hilal S, Huang F, Ikram MA, Jiang J, Lam BYK, Maillard P, Mayer C, McCreary CR, Mok V, Muñoz Maniega S, Petersen M, Roshchupkin G, Sachdev PS, Schmidt R, Seiler S, Seshadri S, Sudre CH, Thomalla G, Valdés Hernández M, Venketasubramanian N, Vernooij MW, Vinke EJ, Wardlaw JM, Wen W, Kuijf HJ, Biessels GJ. Signature White Matter Hyperintensity Locations Associated With Vascular Risk Factors Derived From 15?653 Individuals. Stroke. 2025 Oct; 56(10):3047-3059. PMID: 40832713.
Read At: PubMed
- Published on 8/18/2025
Francis L, Seshadri S, Dillard LK, Kujawa SG, Welling DB, Alcabes RL, Beiser AS. Self-Reported Hearing Aid Use and Risk of Incident Dementia. JAMA Neurol. 2025 Aug 18. PMID: 40824575.
Read At: PubMed
- Published on 7/31/2025
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. bioRxiv. 2025 Jul 31. PMID: 40766561.
Read At: PubMed
- Published on 7/29/2025
Ekenze O, Pinheiro A, Beiser AS, Lioutas VA, Aparicio HJ, Benjamin EJ, Vasan RS, DeCarli C, Seshadri S, Demissie S, Romero JR. Prevalent Cardiovascular Disease and Atrial Fibrillation in Relation to Cerebral Small Vessel Disease Burden. Brain Sci. 2025 Jul 29; 15(8). PMID: 40867146.
Read At: PubMed
View 430 more publications:View Full Profile at BUMC
News & In the Media
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Published on January 13, 2025
Dementia Cases in the US Will Surge in the Coming Decades, Researchers Say
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Published on January 13, 2025
Dementia Cases in US Will Surge in Coming Decades, Researchers Say
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Published on April 29, 2022
Researchers Pinpoint Blood Biomarker That Foretells Dementia
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Published on February 17, 2022
Loneliness in Older Adults Linked with Three-Fold Increased Dementia Risk
- Published on August 18, 2021
- Published on August 17, 2021
- Published on July 20, 2020
- Published on April 1, 2019
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Published on February 26, 2019
Physical Activity Improves Cognitive and Vascular Health in Older People with Diabetes
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Published on November 15, 2018
News or Noise: Diet Drinks Can Triple Risk of Dementia, Stroke
- Published on November 6, 2018
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Published on November 2, 2018
Can Drinking One Diet Drink a Day Triple the Risk of Dementia and Strokes?
- Published on October 26, 2018
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Published on October 26, 2018
Stress Might Lead to Memory Loss and Brain Shrinkage, Study Says
- Published on October 26, 2018
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Published on October 26, 2018
“Stress Hormone” Cortisol Linked to Early Toll on Thinking Ability
- Published on October 26, 2018
- Published on October 26, 2018
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Published on October 26, 2018
Study Shows Stress Hormone’s Link to Memory Deficits, Brain Shrinkage
- Published on October 26, 2018
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Published on October 26, 2018
People Who Are More Stressed May Have Smaller Brains and Worse Memories, According to a New Study
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Published on October 26, 2018
Stressed Out? Study Suggests It May Affect Memory, Brain Size in Middle Age
- Published on October 26, 2018
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Published on October 26, 2018
It Might Stress You Out to Know What Stress Is Doing to Your Brain
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Published on October 26, 2018
It Might Stress You Out to Know What Stress Is Doing to Your Brain
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Published on October 26, 2018
Stress in Middle Age Found to Shrink Your Brain and Impair Memory
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Published on October 26, 2018
Stress in Middle-Age Can Impair Memory, Reduce Brain Size: Here’s All You Need to Know
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Published on October 26, 2018
Middle Age Stress May Shrink the Brain: Eat These Foods to Fight Stress
- Published on October 26, 2018
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Published on October 26, 2018
High Levels of Stress May Shrink the Brain and Affect Memory
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Published on October 26, 2018
Stress May Be Literally Shrinking Your Brain — Here’s What You Need to Know
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Published on October 26, 2018
New Study Links Stress to Worse Memory, Reduced Brain Size in Middle Age
- Published on May 31, 2017
- Published on August 29, 2016
- Published on May 23, 2016
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Published on April 26, 2016
‘Ideal Cardiovascular Health Index’ Protective Against Dementia
- Published on February 23, 2016