Study Examines Diversity in Dermatologic Clinical Trials

Dermatologic clinical trials within the United States reflect the growing diversity of the US population, but reporting of both sex and racial/ethnic diversity of research cohorts is still lacking, especially among studies conducted outside of the United States, according to a new report published online by JAMA Dermatology.
Dermatologist Arash Mostaghimi, M.D., M.P.A., M.P.H., of Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, and coauthors analyzed 626 articles reporting randomized clinical trials for acne, psoriasis, atopic dermatitis and eczema, vitiligo, alopecia areata, seborrheic dermatitis and lichen planus because the conditions are common and lack specific racial predilection.
Of the 626 articles, 97 studies were exclusively conducted in the United States and 164 were partially conducted in the United States; 58 of the 97 studies conducted exclusively within the United States reported on the racial and ethnic demographics of study participants.

Among those 58 studies conducted exclusively within the United States that recorded race/ethnicity, 74.4 percent of the 13,681 participants were white. Among these studies, 46 noted racial categories other than white and nonwhite for a total of 11,140 participants, of whom 72 percent where white, 13 percent were African American, 14.7 percent were recorded as Hispanic and 3.3 percent were recorded as Asian.