Elaine Peskind MD

Elaine Peskind, M.D, is a Co-Director at Northwest Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center (NW MIRECC), VA Puget Sound Health Care System, University of Washington (UW) School of Medicine, Friends of Alzheimer’s Research Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Elaine Peskind's research over the past 35 years has addressed brain stress hormone systems in aging and Alzheimer’s disease, treatment of cognitive and behavioral problems in Alzheimer's Disease, and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative dementing disorders. Dr. Peskind is Co-PI of a national multi-center study of prazosin for disruptive agitation in Alzheimer’s disease funded by the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study. More recently, Dr. Peskind’s research has focused on combat trauma posttraumatic stress disorder and the clinical phenomenology, as well as neuroimaging and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of neurodegeneration in combat blast concussion, mild traumatic brain injury, and in Gulf War Veterans' Illness.

Dr. Elaine Peskind continues to conduct single-site as well as multi-site, large-scale studies of cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers and pharmacological treatment trials for behavioral disorders and traumatic brain injury. Dr. Peskind has over 340 publications and has been continuously funded with VA Merit Reviews or NIH R01 grants for over 20 years; she is the PI of both the NIA T32 training grant: “Neurobehavior, Neuropathology, and Risk Factors in Alzheimer’s Disease,” and the Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center Advanced Research Fellowship. Dr. Peskind is an elected Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. In 2018, Dr. Peskind was selected as the recipient of the Paul B. Magnuson Award, VA's Rehabilitation Research and Development’s highest award for outstanding research in traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and neurodegenerative disorders.