Framingham Heart Study Continues To Provide Important Data

Main Category: Cardiovascular / Cardiology
Article Date: 28 Nov 2007 - 8:00 PST

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"Sixty years ago, Americans smoked, drank and ate too much of the wrong things -- then died of heart disease and stroke at higher and higher rates," but the ongoing Framingham Heart Study, sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at NIH, "changed the way many Americans live" and "turned things around," HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt writes in a Boston Globe opinion piece. For the study, which began in 1948, researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine have tracked the lifestyles and medical histories of more than 14,000 residents of Framingham, Mass., Leavitt writes. According to Leavitt, the study led to the determination of "risk factors" for cardiovascular disease -- such as smoking, hypertension and high cholesterol levels -- and, since the 1960s, the mortality rate from the condition has decreased by more than 60%.

Today, the study is "once again at the forefront of medical research," as last month "Framingham became one of several research projects in which participants' clinical records have been paired with their genetic data to help researchers learn more about the associations between genetic factors and health," he writes. Leavitt adds, "We need extensive and reliable clinical information from large numbers of people if we are to understand the genetic role and use it effectively," and the "data from the Framingham Study is unusually rich and deep" and "promises to make a significant contribution to a future in which genetic medicine helps us predict, prevent, pre-empt and cure disease" (Leavitt, Boston Globe, 11/27).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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