The Baltimore Longitudinal Study Of Aging

巴尔的摩老龄化纵向研究(BLSA)是NIA目前关于人类老龄化的主要研究计划，自1958年以来一直在老年学研究中心进行，在位于巴尔的摩海港医院的NIA-ASTRA(老龄翻译研究)单位并不活跃。这项研究继续代表着一个科学家联盟，他们致力于描述正常和病理性衰老的特征。目前负责管理这项研究的研究团队正在对设计和评估技术进行重大改变。主要的科学目标仍然是BLSA原始遗产中报告的那些目标：1)确定不能用疾病解释的个体之间与年龄相关的差异，并表征影响从正常衰老向病理性衰老过渡的因素。然而，正在实施新的措施，目的是更好地了解年龄和疾病对导致许多老年人行动不便和生活质量低下的过程的影响。重点是综合和多学科的方法和补偿机制，这种机制在多个层面(细胞、组织、器官、全身、社会)自然实施，使许多老年人尽管经历了多种病理过程，仍能保持良好的行动能力。 研究人群是一群志愿者，他们在多次随访中被终身跟踪。许多活跃的参与者已经在这项研究中工作了20多年，有些人甚至长达44年。未来，将实施一项筛查计划，以延长那些保持极高身体和认知功能水平的人的寿命。 在过去，BLSA一直是所有关于老龄化的流行病学研究的黄金标准参考。在心血管研究领域的重要发现，影响前列腺癌风险的因素，与年龄相关的认知功能下降，肌肉力量和骨骼力量，甚至在最近几年都有发表。将BLSA转移到ASTRA单位对于开始将一些新知识应用到临床角度是重要的。为了实现这一目标，将在BLSA辅助研究的同时进行，这些研究仅限于少数参与者，并涉及单一的预先制定的假设，更有可能提供可直接应用于临床医学的信息。

The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA), the Intramural NIA's current major research program on human aging, has been conducted at the Gerontology Research Center since 1958 and is not active at the NIA-ASTRA (Translational Research on Aging) Unit located at Harbor Hospital (Baltimore). The study continues to represent a consortium of scientists who work to characterize normal and pathological aging. The team of researcher that is currently managing the study is implementing major changes in the design and in the assessment technology. The primary scientific goals remain those that were reported in the original BLSA legacy: 1) to identify age-associated differences among individuals which are not explained by diseases and to characterize factors that affect the transitions from normal to pathological aging. However, new measures are being implemented that are aimed at gaining a better understanding of the effect of age and diseases on the process that leads to mobility disability and poor quality of life in many older adults. The focus is on an integrative and multidisciplinary approach and the compensatory mechanisms that, naturally implemented at multiple levels (cells, tissues, organis, whole body, society), allow many older persons to maintain a good level of mobility in spite of multiple pathological process. The study population is a cohort of volunteers that are followed for life over multiple follow-up visits. Many of the active participants have been in the study for more than 20 years, and some for as long as 44 years. In the future, a screening program will be implemented to longeve individuals that have maintained an extraordinary high level of physical and congnitive functioning. In the past, the BLSA has been the gold-standard reference for all epidemiological studies on aging. Important findings in the area of cardiovascular research, factors affecting the risk of prostate cancer, age-associated decline of cognitive function, muscle strength and bone strength were published even in recent years. Moving the BLSA in the ASTRA unit was important to start implementing some of the new knowdledge into a clinical perspective. This goal will be pursued by conducting in parallel of the BLSA ancillary studies that, being limited to a small number of participants and adressing a single, pre-formulated hypothesis, are more likely to provide information that can be directly applied in clinical medicine.