A Case for Diversity
SAN ANTONIO MAGAZINE / JULY 2014 Cancer Therapyy & Research Center makes strides in diversifying clinical trials When modern treatments for childhood leukemia began in the late 1950s, the cure rate for kids was still close to zero. After multiple clinical trials, in which doctors tested and improved medications, the mortality rate has decreased. Now, more than […]
Would you want to know if you’re likely to get Alzheimer’s disease?
Washington Post: 6/19/14 Last month, I wrote about the problems that pharmaceutical companies and other researchers have recruiting sufficient numbers of volunteers for clinical trials of medications that may prove valuable against a wide variety of disorders. Here is one example of how that may affect people who might benefit from that research. — Lenny Bernstein. `A large […]
Ethics and Regulatory Complexities for Pragmatic Clinical Trials
JAMA: 6/18/14 Some patients do not receive the best care possible, either because research to support clinical decision making with high-quality evidence is lacking or because evidence-based practices are not routinely implemented.1 Pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs), which include patients in routine clinical practice settings and typically incorporate comparative effectiveness research (CER)—that is, comparing the safety and effectiveness […]
Biopharmaceutical Research Companies Are Developing More Than 430 Medicines for Top Chronic Diseases Affecting Older Americans
phrma: 6/16/14 As life expectancy continues to climb— up to more than 81 years for women and 76 years for men—the growing number of Americans age 65 and older will face new challenges from chronic conditions such as arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, which impact their health, productivity and independence. Those diseases not only […]
Collaborative Development of Clinical Trials Education Programs for African-American Community-Based Organizations
Journal of Cancer Education: June 2014 This paper describes the use of a unique “Learning and Feedbackˮ approach to customize cancer clinical trials education programs for Community Bridges, a peer training intervention designed for African-American communities in North Carolina. Generic community education modules were demonstrated with key community leaders who were designated as trainers. Quantitative and […]
The Graying of Clinical Trials
Pharmexec: June 4, 2014 Patients 65 years of age and over are underrepresented in clinical trials, even though in many therapeutic categories they are the primary drug consumers. But, writes, Sydney Rubin, there are few practical or ethical obstacles to including elderly patients in trials that cannot be overcome. Thanks to efforts of groups like […]
FDA launches openFDA to provide easy access to valuable FDA public data
FDA: June 2, 2014 Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration launched openFDA, a new initiative designed to make it easier for web developers, researchers, and the public to access large, important public health datasets collected by the agency. In alignment with the recent Presidential Executive Order on Open Data and the Department of Health and […]