Mass.-based Framingham Heart Study celebrates 75 years [Video]

The groundbreaking Framingham Heart Study, which started 75 years ago in Massachusetts, has grown to include thousands of people across three generations who live in several states.Framingham Heart Study participant Judy Daubney said her grandmother, Rose Giacomuzzi, was one of the first 5,000 people to take part in the original study in 1948. Years later, Daubney’s father signed up and then Daubney and her siblings volunteered after their uncle’s sudden death.”My grandmother had already been in this study for 21 years, and she didn’t know that her son was going to pass away from heart disease,” Daubney said. “Now, it became more personal for us.”Doctors, politicians and volunteers gathered in Framingham on Monday to celebrate the study’s 75th anniversary.”Much of what we’ve learned specifically from this study has become common knowledge,” said Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, director of the National Institutes of Health.”It was Framingham researchers who first coined the term …