A CHANGE OF HEART: How the Framingham Heart Study Helped Unravel the Mysteries of Cardiovascular Disease

A CHANGE OF HEART: How the Framingham Heart Study Helped Unravel the Mysteries of Cardiovascular Disease Knopf, 2005, 276 p., hardcover, $26.95.

DANIEL LEVY AND SUSAN BRINK

Before 1948, most Americans were unaware that the rich, fatty foods they ate, the cigarettes they smoked, and the lethargic habits they indulged could be killing them, cardiovascular disease was the number-one killer, and yet people who succumbed to it were often pronounced dead from “unknown” illness. All this changed after the launch of a massive, government-sponsored epidemiological study spurred, in part, by President Franklin Roosevelt’s death from a stroke. The study that would change medical history began with 5,209 average citizens of Framingham, Mass. Each study participant was subjected to biannual physicals and interviews about his or her diet and lifestyle. The gathered data were at first intended to clarify the suspected, but then-unconfirmed, connection between high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, and the study accomplished that aim. A Change of Heart chronicles the story of the Framingham Heart Study from the difficult recruitment of volunteers to the financial woes that threatened to shut it down. The authors also describe the eventual findings that produced lifesaving treatments for hypertension and atherosclerosis. Now in its third generation, the Framingham Heart Study is the foundation of many of the health and nutritional guidelines that people today view as common sense. No longer are heart disease and stroke inevitable consequences of aging, but conditions that can be prevented and even reversed.

Copyright Science Service, Incorporated Apr 2, 2005