image by: mgstanton

HWN Suggests

Cardiovascular Risk Factors. Insights From Framingham Heart Study

Epidemiology involves the study of disease frequency and its determinants within the population. Cardiovascular epidemiology began in the 1930s as a result of changes observed in the causes of death. In the 1950s, several epidemiological studies were set in motion with the aim of clarifying the cause of cardiovascular disease. Four years after the Framingham Heart Study started, researchers had identified high cholesterol and high blood pressure levels as important factors in the development of cardiovascular disease. In subsequent years, the Framingham study and other epidemiological studies have helped to identify other risk factors, which are now considered classical risk factors. By coining…

read full article

Featured

 Rethinking the Framingham Score: Is There a Better Way to Predict Heart Disease?

Doctors are constantly telling us that prevention is the best medicine, especially when it comes to chronic problems like heart disease. The key to a good prevention strategy is, of course, controlling the risk factors that contribute to disease. But now a new study shows that a commonly used measure to predict — and therefore help prevent — heart disease may not be as accurate as previously thought.

Articles of Interest

Let's look at those tests again

When scientists from Bristol University questioned the accuracy of risk estimates based on the Framingham heart study, there was a collective intake of breath. As accusations go, it was up there with criticising David Attenborough or saying puppies aren't adorable. For Framingham was the most gilded of gold standard medical data sets. But it now looks as though it has been relegated to that league of greats that once ruled the world but which are now recognised as also being able to bamboozle, mislead and generally misinform.

BU and Federal Investigation Underway into Hacking of Framingham Heart Study Data

BU officials interrupted the cyberattack, but some data was breached; all study participants have been notified and are being assisted

Doctors Will Add Genetic Data To Framingham Heart Study

A historic study of heart disease in Framingham, Mass., that was launched after World War II is about to enter the genomic age. In an effort to discern the genetic causes of common diseases including heart disease and stroke, officials with Framingham Heart Study said they would spend more than $13 million to collect detailed genetic information on about 9,000 study participants. The study, one of the largest of its kind, is part of a new wave of projects seeking to unveil the genetic underpinnings of common diseases using new DNA-reading technologies. Officials at the U.S. government study, which is administered by Boston University, hope that exploring links between genes and common risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol levels will give doctors new and more-effective treatment options.

Exercising in mid and later life can reduce dementia risk – new study

The new research draws on data from 4,290 participants enrolled in the Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort. This study began in 1948, when researchers recruited more than 5,000 adults aged 30 and over from the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, to investigate long-term risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Framingham at 70: Celebrating a Landmark Heart Study

The link between hypertension and CVD is now common knowledge due to a research program launched in 1948

Framingham: The study and the town that changed the health of a generation

Smoking. Cholesterol. Blood pressure. Obesity. It's common knowledge today that these all can lead to heart trouble. But in the 1940s, with one in two deaths caused by cardiovascular disease and even after President Franklin Roosevelt died from the effects of heart failure and a massive stroke, the information would have been considered revolutionary.

The Framingham Study on Cardiovascular Disease Risk and Stress-Defenses: A Historical Review

The Framingham Heart Study has defined a set of risk factors for cardiovascular disease through epidemiological observations of a well-defined population in Framingham, Massachusetts. The observations and analyses of this study have been repeatedly confirmed, and the derived Framingham Risk Factor Score (FRS) serves as a gold standard for predicting cardiovascular disease (CVD) at the population level.

The real villain in heart disease

The study's overwhelming accomplishment was the identification of a series of “risk factors.” It proved that men have more and earlier heart attacks than women, and that people who have high levels of cholesterol in the blood, high blood pressure, diabetes, electrocardiogram (EKG) abnormalities or low vital capacity (the amount of air that can be expelled from the lungs), who smoke cigarettes or have parents and grandparents with heart problems are more likely to have heart attacks than those with none of these factors. And the more factors, the higher the risk.

Resources

70-year legacy of the Framingham Heart Study

The FHS is a rich, longitudinal, transgenerational and deeply phenotyped cohort study with a sustained focus on state-of-the-art epidemiological methods and technological advances to facilitate scientific discoveries.

Framingham Heart Study,

Since our beginning in 1948, the Framingham Heart Study, under the direction of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), formerly known as the National Heart Institute, has been committed to identifying the common factors or characteristics that contribute to cardiovascular disease (CVD). We have followed CVD development over a long period of time in three generations of participants. Since 1971, the Boston University School of Medicine has served as NHLBI contractor and academic partner for the study.