The BLSA Program in Pulmonary Aging has focused on describing longitudinal changes in pulmonary function and demonstrating the importance of pulmonary aging in determining the health of individuals as they age. The BLSA recently published the first study to demonstrate that an accelerated decline in forced expiratory volume at one second predicts coronary heart disease death. Current research is focusing on establishing longitudinal norms for age-associated changes in pulmonary FEV1 in healthy, non-smoking men and women. Longitudinal analyses of changes in FEV1 were conducted among 91 men and 82 women who had no history of respiratory problems and had never smoked cigarettes. The FEV1 data were modeled using a mixed-effects regression model and longitudinal percentile distributions of FEV1 level were constructed. The findings showed 1) the average longitudinal rate of decline in FEV1 was approximately 240-340 ml/decade in men and women, 2) none of the participants exhibited a sustained improvement in FEV1, and 3) between-subjects variability is greater in men than women and increases with age in men, but decreases with age in women. The age- and gender-specific percentile distributions are the first nomograms which reflect age differences in the variability in pulmonary function. Future research will expand the work on developing age- and gender-specific nomograms for other pulmonary measures and will examine the effect of smoking cessation on pulmonary function. The pulmonary testing protocol is currently under review to develop new research directions.
