The Framingham Heart Study is one of the most important epidemiological studies ever undertaken. Funded by the National Institute of Health, the Study enrolled 5,209 residents of Framingham, a town near Boston, Massachusetts, to investigate the causes and the prevention of cardiovascular disease at a time when little was known about this.Giving participants physical exams, questionnaires to fill out, and blood tests every two years, the Study discovered what are now well-established risk factors for cardiovascular disease: smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, blood cholesterol, and physical inactivity.
In 1968, the Study was moved to Boston University when federal funding was temporarily stopped. It is now run by Boston University and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The Study has enrolled three generation of participants.
References:
- Framingham Heart Study website
- Framingham Heart Study history
- Wikipedia history
- Framingham Heart Study database at National Cancer Institute
- University of Minnesota history of Study
- Framingham Heart Study’s Impact on Global Risk Assessment
- History of the early years of the Study
- Will Framingham be the gold standard for genetic studies of cardiovascular disease?
- The global impact of Framingham (a series of papers)
- A Change of Heart: How the People of Framingham, Massachusetts, Helped Unravel the Mysteries of Cardiovascular Disease by Daniel Levy and Susan Brink (Knopf, 2005).
