Documentation
Description:
BLSA Open Data
About the Data: The BLSA Open data project is a publicly available subset of the full BLSA data (selected variables and fewer participant-visits). The Open project currently contains non-embargoed data from deceased participants only; as such, care should be taken regarding expected biases. While a simple project description is requested, a fully approved proposal and a fully executed DUA are not required. A script to help load the data into R on the AD Data Initiative AD Workbench is included in the resources section below (blsa_open.r)
About the BLSA:
The National Institute on Aging’s Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) is America"s longest-running scientific study of human aging. It began in 1958, when gerontology—the study of aging—was still very much in its infancy. Today, the BLSA is world-renowned, having generated thousands of scientific papers and having made major contributions to our understanding of what it means to get older. Find out more about the BLSA and find potential collaboration opportunities by visiting: https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/labs/blsa
Contact Information for Comprehensive Support: If you have any questions or encounter issues, please feel free to reach out to us at BLSAdata@nih.gov. For your convenience, kindly include the BLSA Data Science representatives: Michael Griswold (mgriswold@umc.edu) and Hunter Sylvester (hsylvester@umc.edu), so that we can provide you with comprehensive and timely assistance. Requests are usually processed within two weeks. We appreciate your cooperation and look forward to addressing any inquiries you may have. Contact email list: BLSAdata@nih.gov; mgriswold@umc.edu; hsylvester@umc.edu
Additional Resources:
Understanding the BLSA: This video provides an overview of the BLSA data, detailing its unique cohort and what open, permissioned, and synthetic datasets are. Watch to understand the specific characteristics and benefits of using BLSA data in research.(https://community.addi.ad-datainitiative.org/video-library/addi-learning-series-events/m/presentations/488)
Additional Metadata: Explore additional useful information contained in the BLSA Meta-Encyclopedia, available at: BLSA Explorer-ME (https://mindset.umc.edu/blsa-explore-me/). The explorer tool can be used to find data available in ADDI and obtain scripts to help load the data into R, Python, and other statistical packages.
Additional Permissioned Data: Find more BLSA data available to researchers inside the ADDI platform with additional requirements in the BLSA Permissioned Data (https://fair.addi.ad-datainitiative.org/#/data/datasets/blsa_permissioned_data_00001) project.
Additional Synthetic Data: Also see our related BLSA Synthetic Data (https://fair.addi.ad-datainitiative.org/#/data/datasets/addi_synthetic_data) project to explore a synthesized (simulated) version of the BLSA data with similar observations and measures as the Permissioned Data. While not suitable for publishing results, synthetic data is useful for assistance in exploring available data and generating proposals to submit to gain access to the full (Permissioned) BLSA datasets.
Coverage
Spatial:
US
Follow Up:
Unknown
Provenance
Temporal
Accrual Periodicity:
Static
Start Date:
01 January 2026
Time Lag:
Not applicable
Accessibility
Access
Access Rights:
See dataset for details. Access data at:
Usage
Resource Creators:
BLSA Data Science
Observations
Statistical Population
Population Description
Population Size
Measured Property
Observation Date
Persons
954
Count
01 January 2026