Clinical Trials

The lack of minority representation in clinical trials is often explained as an unwillingness of minority patients to become involved. However, a study on barriers to recruiting underrepresented populations to cancer clinical trials demonstrates that the researcher may be responsible for this outcome. This study and others have found that providing additional information relevant to...

We are living longer, and our population is increasingly aging. Despite a growing need for clinical trials that benefit seniors, the median age of clinical trial participants is decreasing. A recent study examining clinical trial enrollment of over 262,000 patients with common cancer types between 1994 and 2015 found that the difference in the median...

The inclusion of pregnant women in clinical trials has been one of the most contentious issues of modern science. While we have come a long way since the exclusion of all women of childbearing age, there is still hesitation among scientists to include pregnant women, a vulnerable population, in clinical trials [1]. After all, a...

Tocilizumab plus standard care is not superior to standard care alone for improving clinical outcomes among patients with severe or critical COVID-19 and may increase mortality, according to a study published online Jan. 20 in The BMJ. Viviane C. Veiga, M.D., Ph.D., from the BP-A Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo in Brazil, and colleagues conducted a...

The risk of getting prostate cancer is 75% higher for Black men than it is for white men, and it is more than twice as deadly. Now, research is helping to bring genetic risks for people of various racial and ethnic groups into focus. In doing so, dozens more risk factors that could better help...

As discussed in Part 1 of this two-part article series, more than one out of every thousand Americans have died from COVID-19. The U.S. single-day death record continues to climb, and global vaccination and herd immunity cannot come soon enough. Since the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines came out last month, many Americans, particularly racial/ethnic minorities, have been...

To date, more than one out of every thousand Americans who started 2020 with us have died from COVID-19. With a new U.S. single-day death record of more than 4,400 deaths on January 12, global vaccination and herd immunity cannot come soon enough. Since the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were rolled out in December...

Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Lack Racial Diversity  Investigators report that although 22% of prostate cancer diagnoses take place in non-Hispanic Black men, more than 96% of participants in prostate cancer clinical trials are non-Hispanic white men. That was the conclusion published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Prevention. Worse, enrollment of African American men in prostate...

According to a study published in The Journal of Urology, Black men with prostate cancer suffer worse decisional regret than non Black men. The study, conducted by the Cleveland Clinic and led by Dr. Molly E. DeWitt Foy, took a closer look at sources of regret with a focus on racial disparities among 1,113 patients...