Older Patients (Still) Left Out of Cancer Clinical Trials

Authors: Jennifer Abbasi
Publication Year: 2019
Last Updated: 2021-07-14 10:40:19
Journal: Journal of the American Medical Association
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Short Abstract:

A decade before he became the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, MD, published a 2004 study in JAMA about participants in cancer clinical trials. Among other findings, Murthy and his coauthors concluded that from 2000 to 2002, people aged 65 years or older were “strikingly underrepresented” in a set of National Cancer Institute–funded drug trials. Fifteen years later, a JAMA Oncology study suggests that not much has changed for older people with cancer. In fact, things appear to be getting worse.

For the new study, researcher Ethan Ludmir, MD, a radiation oncology resident at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston,Texas, and colleagues considered the same cancers as Murthy: breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate—the 4 types that strike and kill the most people every year. But they cast a wider net, looking at all 302 phase 3 randomized, multigroup clinical trials for these cancers that initiated enrollment from 1994 to 2015.

Abstract:

A decade before he became the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, MD, published a 2004 study in JAMA about participants in cancer clinical trials. Among other findings, Murthy and his coauthors concluded that from 2000 to 2002, people aged 65 years or older were “strikingly underrepresented” in a set of National Cancer Institute–funded drug trials. Fifteen years later, a JAMA Oncology study suggests that not much has changed for older people with cancer. In fact, things appear to be getting worse.

For the new study, researcher Ethan Ludmir, MD, a radiation oncology resident at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston,Texas, and colleagues considered the same cancers as Murthy: breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate—the 4 types that strike and kill the most people every year. But they cast a wider net, looking at all 302 phase 3 randomized, multigroup clinical trials for these cancers that initiated enrollment from 1994 to 2015.

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