© ISTOCK.COM/MICHAELJUNGSurveys of clinical research tell a bleak tale about diversity in study populations. A review of cancer treatment trials published between 2001 and 2010 reported that 80 percent of participants were white and 60 percent were male (Cancer, 119:2956-63, 2013). Another survey found that less than 5 percent of NIH-funded studies of respiratory diseases in the last 20 years included minority (nonwhite) participants (Am J Respir Crit Care Med, 191:514-21, 2015).
This lack of diversity means that many questions go unanswered about the benefits and risks of drugs in minorities, women, and the elderly—groups that are typically underrepresented. What’s more, different ethnic groups have different propensities toward certain diseases—Hispanic people are more likely than whites to be diagnosed with diabetes, for example—making the study of treatments for these groups even more important.
Enrolling the necessary clinical trial participants from any demographic can be a challenge (see “Clinical Matchmaker,” The Scientist, June 2015), but there are special barriers to recruiting underrepresented groups. Minority groups often harbor a general distrust of the medical community, dating back to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis trial with African American men in the 1930s. Practicalities also stand in the way: time commitment and ...
