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项目，自1958年以来一直在老年学研究中心进行，而位于海港医院（巴尔的摩）的NIA-ASTRA（老龄化转化研究）部门并不活跃。这项研究继续代表着一个致力于表征正常和病理性衰老的科学家联盟。目前管理这项研究的研究人员团队正在对设计和评估技术进行重大变更。主要的科学目标仍然是那些在原始BLSA遗产中报告的目标：1）确定无法用疾病解释的个体之间与年龄相关的差异，并描述影响从正常衰老到病理衰老转变的因素。然而，正在采取新的措施，以便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，这些机制自然地在多个层面（细胞、组织、器官、全身、社会）实施，使许多老年人能够在多种病理过程中保持良好的活动能力。 研究人群是在多次随访访视期间接受终身随访的志愿者队列。许多积极的参与者已经在这项研究中工作了20多年，有些甚至长达44年。在未来，将实施一项筛查计划，以长期保持极高水平的身体和神经功能。 在过去，BLSA一直是所有老龄化流行病学研究的金标准参考。近年来，在心血管研究、影响前列腺癌风险的因素、与年龄相关的认知功能下降、肌肉力量和骨骼强度等领域也发表了重要发现。将BLSA转移到ASTRA单元对于开始将一些新知识应用于临床非常重要。这一目标将通过平行开展BLSA辅助研究来实现，这些研究仅限于少数受试者，并针对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.