Heart Disease

The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) looks for answers to the question, "What is normal aging?" This may seem like a simple question, but for scientists, it gets to the heart of something quite complex: how to identify the true effects of aging and how to separate factors such as disease, socioeconomic disadvantage, or lack of educational opportunity from the underlying biological or other mechanisms common to human aging.

At 60 years and counting the National Institute on Aging's Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) is one of the longest-running studies in the world. The study was the first to ask a most basic question: What is normal aging?

There is still much to learn, but so far two major conclusions can be drawn from BLSA data. First, "normal" aging cannot be distinguished from disease. Although people's bodies change and can in some ways decline over time, these changes do not inevitably lead to diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, or dementia.