New Research Grant Will Enable Framingham Heart Study to Explore Biology of Aging

A new federal research grant will allow the Framingham Heart Study to investigate the biology of aging, reports the Boston Globe . Scientists at Boston University's (BU) School of Medicine will measure changes in properties like blood pressure, stiffness of arteries, stickiness of blood platelets, and fat accumulation in participants' livers. "This will let us do deep phenotyping," says BU's Vasan Ramachandran. "Technology has changed. When this study began, we could measure a few proteins circulating in the blood. Now we have advanced screening where we can measure up to 1,300 proteins." Ramachandran adds that a better understanding of aging and the determinants of health and disease in older adults is vital as the 65-plus U.S. population grows. The researchers will be collecting and analyzing blood and tissue samples from about 1,900 people in a second-generation study cohort, who are children of the original participants. The first-generation cohort and their children are white, but the study will add 450 nonwhites in an "omni-cohort," recruited in 1995. The study aims to track the aging of the second generation, and ultimately about 4,000 people in a third-generation cohort as they enter middle and old age.