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During its first phase, the Framingham Heart Study collected data from over 5000 residents of the town of Framingham, MA. Participants, both men and women, volunteered for regular physical exams during which they submitted to dozens of medical tests and answered detailed questions about their personal habits. Then the researchers sat back and watched the health of the volunteers, looking for connections between the health of the volunteers' circulatory systems and the data that had been collected. Over the past five decades, researchers involved in the study discovered many of the risk factors for heart disease that doctors now take for granted - connections between fat consumption and cholesterol levels, between smoking and heart disease, and between weight and blood pressure, among many others. Data from the Framingham residents have been shared with other research projects as well, providing information about conditions from Alzheimer's to osteoporosis. A second phase of the study, begun in 1971, enrolled over 5000 descendants of the original volunteers and continues to track them today. How was the study done, and what had it taught us? Join us for this segment of Science Friday to find out.
Guests: Peter Buttrick, M.D. Rick Lofton Books/Articles Discussed: Related Links: | |||||
| Executive web producer: Ira Flatow Web producer: Charles Bergquist |