Lack of Elderly Patients in Clinical Trials, USA Today Examines

Main Category: Seniors / Aging
Article Date: 06 May 2005 - 15:00 PST

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USA Today on Thursday examined the "shortage of evidence" physicians have on elderly patients in clinical trials -- "one of the more challenging medical problems that an aging America must confront." According to... USA Today, elderly patients "with overlapping chronic illnesses and medicine cabinets resembling small pharmacies often can't qualify for medical research." As a result of the "elderly data gap," physicians, pharmaceutical companies and federal regulators "can't always predict" the effect medications or procedures will have on elderly patients, and physicians often must "base their decisions partly on results from studies in younger patients, partly on their clinical experience and partly on guess work" when they prescribe certain medications to patients ages 75 and older, USA Today reports. In addition, problems with some medications among elderly patients might not appear until after the treatments reach the market. Alta Charo, a professor of medicine and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, said, "The elderly are basically understudied guinea pigs in the post-market approval phase of drug distribution." Pharmaceutical companies exclude elderly patients from trials because "they may be more likely to suffer potentially dangerous side effects or because their presence would make it harder for researchers to interpret the study's results" -- not because they are "too old," according to USA Today. However, "This is precisely the group for which we lack evidence, especially for those who are taking multiple medications and have a high risk of adverse consequences of heart disease," Harlan Krumholz of Yale University said (Sternberg, USA Today, 5/5).

USA Today

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