11 Dec Study finds significant ethnic disparities in enrollment rates of gynecologic clinical trials

By Andy Studna, Applied Clinical Trials

A recent study published on JAMA has found that there are significant racial and ethnic disparities present within the population of women undergoing treatment for gynecologic cancer. The authors of the study bring attention to other recent findings which suggest between 6% and 8% of the US adult population with cancer participates in clinical trials. However, these findings also found that patients from minoritized racial and ethnic groups have a low representation within the 6%-8% figure.

The article also reviews prior research done on the underrepresentation of ethnic groups in these trials, calling for a more inclusive trial population. “These studies highlight the need for data sets that include large numbers of women from underrepresented groups. As such, we examined associations of race and ethnicity with clinical trial enrollment among women with gynecologic cancer using the National Cancer Database (NCDB),” the authors say.

Along with findings obtained from the NCDB, additional data used for this study were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER), a population-based cancer registry. Participants included women with an endometrial, ovarian, or cervical cancer diagnosed from 2004 to 2019. The ethnicities categorized were American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black, Hispanic (any race), Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, White, and other. Read more …