Did You Know?
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services speaks at anniversary event
By Vicky Waltz
Pathologist Cesare Tedeschi and Thomas Dawber (right), a former director of the study. Photograph courtesy of the Framingham Heart Study archives
In 1948, when the Framingham Heart Study began, the term “risk factor” hadn’t yet been invented, and the idea that diet, exercise, and tobacco use could affect a person’s cardiovascular health seemed almost revolutionary. To recruit volunteers, the researchers literally went door to door throughout Framingham, Massachusetts, asking people to participate by having regular physical examinations and answering questions about their lifestyles. That year, more than 5,200 residents between the ages of thirty and sixty-two signed up.
Now, sixty years later, the study — originally under the auspices of the Public Health Service and now sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and run by Boston University since 1971 — is working with its third generation of Framingham residents. It has yielded landmark results that have changed the way doctors think about treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease, and it is now poised to make even greater contributions to personalized medicine with the release of the clinical records and genetic data of 9,000 of the study’s 14,000-plus participants to the scientific community. Through the SHARe (SNP Health Association Resource) program, researchers will be able to use genetic markers, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, to compare an individual’s genetic data with his or her clinical history, offering new insight into the relationship between genetics and health.
Last November, the study’s leaders gathered in Framingham to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary. Joining them were hundreds of study participants, along with Mike Leavitt, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and Boston University President Robert A. Brown.
“Framingham changed the focus of health care from treating sick people to trying to prevent healthy people from getting sick,” says Philip A. Wolf, the study’s principal investigator and a professor of neurology, medicine, and public health at BU’s School of Medicine. “The study identified the risk factors for diseases of the heart and blood vessels — the idea that hypertension, high cholesterol, and, I believe, cigarette smoking were key risk factors for developing coronary disease.”
Additional reporting by Rebecca McNamara (CAS’08, COM’08)