Clyde CS, Yazzie GA, Cayatineto HW, Grunther B and Joseph Angel de Soto
Introduction: This year 43,000 women will die from breast cancer in the United States. African Americans and Native Americans though less likely to get breast cancer, once diagnosed they are much more likely to die from breast cancer. This increased death rate may in part be due to the non-generalizability of breast cancer clinical trials. In this study, we evaluate the participation of ethnic minorities from breast cancer clinical trials.
Methodology: In this study, fifty-six breast cancer clinical trials completed in the last ten years in the United States were evaluated for the inclusion of ethnic minorities in the breast cancer clinical trials.
Results: Only 21% of breast cancer clinical trials include information on ethnicity in the methodology while only 7% provided any information on the effect or toxicity of the therapeutic intervention in minority groups while 100% report the results for Whites. Though Whites only make up 60.1% of the population, they were 87.5% of the clinical trial participants while African Americans were 6.2%, Hispanics 3.1%, Asians 2.9% and Native Americans were 0.2% of the participants.
Conclusion: Racial minorities have been underrepresented in breast cancer clinical trials which may contribute to unnecessarily high death rates in these groups while suggesting limited generalizability of breast cancer clinical trials.