It started with a simple premise: follow the health and well-being of a community over a period of time to determine what factors lead to heart attack and stroke. More than three decades later, the Muscatine Study is still going strong, and residents continue to provide valuable information to the medical profession.

"It gave us the opportunity to begin the scientific study to see whether risk factors, beginning in childhood, are predictive of certain disorders that can happen to them as they get older," said Ronald Lauer, M.D., UI professor of pediatrics, and lead investigator for the study.

Muscatine Study findings show children with the highest levels of blood pressure are more likely to have hypertension as adults. Children with high cholesterol are also more likely to have siblings and parents with high cholesterol.

"All across the country people are beginning to look at the cholesterol of children whose parents have had premature heart disease or whose parents have high cholesterol," Dr. Lauer said. "And that's a very important thing that's happened because these young people are now being given the kind of medical care they need to prevent the ongoing development of arteriolosclerosis in their blood vessels."

Muscatine was chosen because of its close proximity to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City and the stability of its population. As a direct result of the study, University of Iowa University of Iowa Children's Hospital set up a special clinic to identify and treat children who are at risk for heart disease.

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