Researcher and professor, Sudha Seshadri, MD, from Boston University School of Medicine recently received three grants this year totaling $20 million to continue her research in stroke, Alzheimer’s Disease, healthy brain aging, and dementia. The awards come from the National Institute of Aging and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Dr. Seshardri has been an investigator at the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), a project of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at BU, since 1998. She leads the clinical neurology and neurogenetics cores at FHS, where the group explores how a large variety of genomic and environmental risk factors impact stroke, dementia, and brain-aging over participants sorted into three different generations.
Her research has multiple dimensions including epidemiology of stroke and vascular cognitive impairment, as well as dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. She also explores the correlation between measurements, such as MRI scans and cognitive tests, and novel risk factors, circulating biomarkers, and clinical and subclinical indices of vascular and metabolic disease.
With an already successful career, Dr. Seshardri has made multiple significant contributions to her field. For instance, in 2002, she was the first author on a publication in the NEJM that helped establish plasma homocysteine as an important risk marker for dementia and Alzheimer’s. That paper has had over 1,400 citations since publication. Furthermore, her research has described a novel gene, NINJ2, associated with ischemic stroke.
Dr. Seshardi runs the Geriatric Memory Disorders and Dementia clinic at the BU School of Medicine, in addition to serving in several other leadership capacities in the university. She completed her MBBS from the Christian Medical College, Madras University, and her MD in Internal Medicine and Neurology from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. She also completed a residency in neurology at BU and a Fellowship in the Neurobiology of Aging and Alzheimer Disease at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.
For more information: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-10/bumc-bra101816.php