Exercise , Eat Well , Dont Smoke : 10 Ways the Framingham Heart Study Has Revolutionized Healthcare | The Brink

bu.edu · Feb 16, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Findings from heart health study led by Boston University for more than 50 years have helped save lives around the world Video by onuroner/iStock Heart Health Exercise, Eat Well, Don’t Smoke: 10 Ways the Framingham Heart Study Has Revolutionized Healthcare Findings from heart health study led by Boston University for more than 50 years have helped save lives around the world Cardiovascular disease death rates in the United States dropped dramatically in the second half of the 20th century, as millions of Americans made basic lifestyle changes inspired by fresh scientific insights into heart health. One of the biggest contributors to the rapid advance in knowledge: the Framingham Heart Study, which has long been led by Boston University. As February is American Heart Month, The Brink identified 10 of the study’s most groundbreaking moments, drawn in part from a Journal of the American College of Cardiology dive into its far-reaching impact. (See the list below.) It’s thanks to the study that we know “cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, diet, sedentary lifestyle—these are the core risk factors for cardiovascular disease,” says BU researcher Donald Lloyd-Jones, principal investigator of the study. “It saved a lot of lives—meaning millions—around the world.” Lloyd-Jones is chief of preventive medicine at BU’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, the University’s primary teaching hospital, and a past president of the American Heart Association. He became the sixth principal investigator of the Framingham study in January 2025, after an earlier stint as a researcher there. The study was launched by the US government in 1948 with the recruitment of 5,209 Framingham, Mass., residents ages 28 to 62, without known heart disease. At a time of rising cardiovascular disease deaths, the goal was to investigate the causes of poor heart health, which weren’t well known then. Since 1971, the study has been run as a partnership between Boston University and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The study’s total number of participants has now topped 15,000, encompassing second- and third-generation descendants of the original cohort, along with two new “omni” cohorts of Framingham residents recruited to reflect changing demographics. These dedicated participants deserve the lion’s share of the credit for the breakthroughs, says Lloyd-Jones. Many no longer live in the area, but nearly all return diligently every few years to study headquarters in a nondescript Framingham office park. There, they submit to a long day of medical tests and examinations, along with detailed interviews on medical and lifestyle factors. This winter and spring, the second cohort and the first omni cohort are due to return for their visits. (Some participants who cannot travel are now connected remotely.) The unprecedented breadth and depth of the dataset has enabled a similarly profound set of results: Framingham data has been used in more than 15,000 scientific papers, many of them foundational to our understanding of the causes and effects of heart disease. In the years since the study’s inception, the US cardiovascular disease death rate has tumbled some 60 percent. Its impact continues today, as advances in DNA and computer science have enabled researchers to extend the study’s reach far beyond the original focus of heart health. “By the time that the second generation was being enrolled in the early 1970s, it was clear that this study was here to stay, and we would be following people throughout their lives,” Lloyd-Jones says. “We started to add on things like pulmonary function testing and, as the technology advanced, imaging of different organs, kidneys, brain, and so on. “Today, we’re really more of an aging study in many ways. We do as much work outside the cardiovascular system as we do inside it.” ♥︎ Weight, Cholesterol Are Vital Heart Disease Risk Clues In 1957, Thomas R. Dawber—the Framingham study’s first director and a BU professor from 1966 until his 1980 retirement—and his colleagues published the first major paper to result from the study. They linked blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol levels to an increased four-year risk for heart disease. A 1961 follow-up confirmed the links. ♥︎ Some Heart Attacks Are “Silent” At the end of the 1950s, researchers using Framingham data overturned a long-held belief that heart attacks have to hurt. In the Annals of Internal Medicine, they wrote about the “silent coronary” and the significant number of patients who had evidence of myocardial infarction, but no symptoms. They concluded it could leave some patients undiagnosed—and even sometimes result in death. ♥︎ Smoking Is Associated with Excess Mortality from Heart Disease Amid growing concern over the health effects of smoking, a 1962 paper used Framingham data in part to show that it increased the risk of coronary heart disease. The researchers concluded “cigarette smoking is associated with a mortality rate from all causes significantly higher than for noncigarette smoking. The excess mortality rate is due in large part to coronary heart disease.” ♥︎ Physical Activity Helps Keep Your Heart in Good Shape A 1967 paper by William B. Kannel, a BU medical school professor, showed that sitting around doing nothing—an inactive lifestyle—also increased coronary heart disease risk. America started exercising. Kannel served as director of the Framingham study from 1966–79, and as principal investigator from 1979–87. He continued as an investigator until an illness preceding his 2011 death; he was considered one of the “‘founding fathers’ of preventive cardiology,” according to his obituary. ♥︎ Treating Hypertension Reduces Stroke, Heart Failure Risk According to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, “During the early 1970s, data from the [Framingham study] established the importance of hypertension as a premier risk factor for stroke and congestive heart failure.” Over the next few decades, the journal added, it became widely accepted that hypertension was a “treatable risk factor.” ♥︎ Diabetes Has a Potentially Negative Impact on the Heart Multiple papers using Framingham data in the 1970s, by Kannel and others, showed blood pressure and diabetes increased the risk of congestive heart failure, and that diabetes also contributed to clogged arteries. ♥︎ Stress Hurts Your Heart In a 1978 paper using Framingham data, researchers connected psychosocial factors—stress, tension, anger—with coronary heart disease and heart attacks. For those under 65, aging worries were more common among participants with a heart health issue (especially men); for those over 65, researchers found a significant relationship between “marital dissatisfactions or disagreements” and heart disease. ♥︎ It’s Possible to Predict the 10-Year Risk for Heart Attack, Stroke A study of more than 5,000 Framingham study participants documented in a 1998 paper by then BU researcher Peter W. F. Wilson and his colleagues showed that assessment of a person’s risk factor profile could be used to predict their absolute risk of heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years. “The ’90s and early 2000s were really about risk prediction and defining who’s at risk for what,” Lloyd-Jones says. “These tools paved the way for even more sophisticated risk prediction tools now used widely in clinical practice.” ♥︎ Viewing Heart Disease at a Molecular Level Opens Up a New Level of Knowledge The latest development based on the Framingham study’s deep well of data takes advantage of participants’ family connections and the science of genotyping—determining the genetic makeup of individuals—to look at the epidemiology of heart disease on a molecular level. “With the Human Genome Project, the tools we can use to examine populations and individuals and understand molecular processes—what’s happening at the cellular, the tissue, the organ, the whole body level—was completely revolutionized,” Lloyd-Jones says. “We have everybody’s specific base-by-base DNA code for all the participants who were still alive by the early 2000s, which is amazing.” ♥︎ Predicting Alzheimer’s Disease Could Be Next… In recent years, the Framingham study has had a significant focus on stroke and forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. One of those helping to lead the work is Rhoda Au, a professor of anatomy and neurobiology at BU’s medical school. She’s been collecting and studying digital voice recordings of older Framingham participants, finding subtle speech clues that can reveal cognitive impairments likely to progress to dementia. With colleagues at the BU Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, Au has helped develop an artificial intelligence program that could one day be used to predict a patient’s likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The Framingham Heart Study is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Explore Related Topics: