We Need Better Clinical Trials
Our president explained to reporters why drugs have to be tested on all kinds of people to know who they work for and who can be harmed by them. Cancer patients deserve studies that include women and men, people under and over 65, and all major racial/ethnic groups.
FDA is Chastised Over its ‘Action Plan’ to Diversify Clinical Trial Participation
By Ed Silverman, The Wall Street Journal
August 28, 2014
In response to a law passed two years ago, the FDA was directed to assess the extent to which women and minorities are represented in clinical trials and also devise a plan to bolster their participation. The requirement was made in response to concerns that drugs and devices may often be used by subsets of the population on whom the products were not actually tested.
Well, the FDA released its plan the other day and it was met with what could best be described as faint praise. In particular, a pair of consumer advocacy groups says the biggest issue is that the so-called Action Plan lacks the sort of teeth needed to generate real change. They also complain the plan fails to require drug and device makers to contain specific demographic information in product labeling.
They acknowledged the plan does contain several constructive steps, such as working with drug and device makers to revise product applications with enhanced information on “demographic subgroups;” strengthening FDA reviewer training so the need for demographic data is communicated; improving FDA systems for collecting and analyzing such data; and updating or finalizing guidance for industry.
“The action plan has a lot of good things,” Diana Zuckerman, the president of the National Center for Health Research, tells us. “The problem is there is no incentive for industry to recruit more diverse groups of patients. As long as they continue to test mostly on white men under 65 [years old] and get drugs and devices approved, then they have no incentives” to diversify the pool of trial participants.
What does she suggest? The FDA ought to consider not approving drugs and devices for use in people on whom these products were not tested. As an example, if a drug is tested predominantly on men, then the agency should not endorse widespread use for women. “They need to put some muscle behind their actions. I think if FDA did this,” she says, “then the companies would find they’re able to miraculously find they can recruit all those groups.”
Read the original article here.
Surgery Studies Rarely Use Females
An analysis of papers published in several surgical journals reveals an overwhelming reliance on male subjects and male-derived cells.
By Kerry Grens, The Scientist
August 28, 2014
Sex biases are evidenced in many areas of science—from clinical trials in humans to basic neuroscience studies on animals. Often, male subjects are overrepresented, compromising the generalizability of findings. In a study published in the September issue of Surgery, researchers from Northwestern University analyzed more than 2,300 papers from five surgical journals, finding an overwhelming skew toward investigations involving male-only subjects and cells derived from males.
“Women make up half the population, but in surgical literature, 80 percent of the studies only use males,” Northwestern Medicine vascular surgeon Melina Kibbe, who led the study, said in a press release.
The studies Kibbe and her colleagues reviewed were published in the Annals of Surgery, the American Journal of Surgery, JAMA Surgery, the Journal of Surgical Research, and Surgery from 2011 to 2012. About a quarter of the studies involved animals or cells. Just 3 percent of the total reported using both male and female subjects or cells, while another 22 percent did not state the sex.
According to the release, “editors of the five major surgical journals reviewed in this study have responded to this finding and will now require authors to state the sex of animals and cells used in their studies. If they use only one sex in their studies, they will be asked to justify why.”
Although sex disparities in clinical trials have received considerable attention, such human studies still suffer from unsatisfactory diversity. Last week, for instance, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released an action plan to address the need for more women and minorities in clinical trials. The Wall Street Journal’s Pharmalot blog pointed out that the plan was met with “faint praise,” lacking “the sort of teeth needed to generate real change.”
Speaking with MedPage Today, Diana Zuckerman, the president of the National Center for Health Research, said: “As long as the FDA is going to approve these products for everyone, when they haven’t been studied on everyone, then the [pharmaceutical] companies really have no incentive to improve.”
Read the original article here.