According to new study women, older people and minorities are apparently underrepresented in American lung cancer trials.
As per the findings, researchers are now worried that these results may significantly impact the efficiency and ultimate safety of members of these groups.
"Our results suggest that the trial population used for approval of drugs do not represent well the U.S. population who may receive the marketed agent," the study's principal investigator, Dr. Shakun Malik, a medical officer at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, Md., said in a news release.
"This fact is concerning particularly for older patients who may experience greater toxicity when given the same dose and combination of drugs based on testing in a younger population," Malik explained in the release from the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.
In the study, researchers acknowledged that 42 percent of patients diagnosed with the disease in the U.S. between 1975 and 2008 were women. Meanwhile, although 73 percent of the lung cancer patients in America are older than 65, only 36 percent of the population was in that age group.
Also, while blacks typically develop lung cancer at higher rates than white, they only comprised 2 percent of the trial participants of the study.
If nothing else, this study shows that no totals should be taken to heart or utilized unless they have been verified and shown to be an accurate representation of the population.
