Some things can’t be rushed. Take the Framingham Heart Study, which deliberately set out to check for markers and risk factors of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a large number of participants over an extended time frame.
Centred on the residents of Framingham, Massachusetts and begun in 1948, the research pool stretches to thousands of volunteers, including the original participants, their children and now their grandchildren, all of whom regularly undergo a detailed medical history, physical examination and lab tests.
But it’s not just the scale or longevity of the study conducted by researchers at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Boston University that’s impressive. Through countless observations collected over almost 70 years, the Framingham Heart Study has taught us much of what we now know about the causes of heart disease, including the major risk factors such as high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, smoking, obesity, diabetes and physical inactivity.
The source of around 1,200 articles in leading medical journals, the Study’s findings have led to the development of life-saving treatment and preventative strategies, prompting one commentator to describe it as “on its way to becoming the gold standard for cardiovascular genetic epidemiology”. Jumpstart may have only been around for a heartbeat in comparison, but we’d like to think we set the same high standards in the realm of R&D tax credits.
