We say that we need clinical trials, but only a small percentage of patients actually enroll in these trials. We’ve known this for a while, but it has just been confirmed.
A study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology shows that the overall enrollement in cancer trials hovers in the very low single digits. Men were less likely than women to enroll. Enrollment was lower for African-American and older patients. Lack of enrollment badly hampers the relevance (generalizability) of any trial. This is because it brings an extreme volunteer bias, whose impact on observations is hard to gauge.
To understand prostate cancer tomorrow, we need enrollment today.
Filed under: Drugs in development | Tagged: clinical trials, prostate cancer
