Women remain underrepresented in cardiovascular clinical trials overall, though participation has improved in specific areas like stroke and heart failure.
BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among women worldwide, yet, women have historically been underrepresented in cardiovascular trials. METHODS: We systematically assessed the participation of women in completed cardiovascular trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov between 2010 and 2017, and extracted publicly available information including disease type, sponsor type, country, trial size, intervention type, and the demographic characteristics of trial participants. We calculated the female-to-male ratio for each trial and determined the prevalence-adjusted estimates for participation of women by dividing the percentage of women among trial participants by the percentage of women in the disease population (participation prevalence ratio; a ratio of 0.8 to 1.2 suggests comparable prevalence and good representation). RESULTS: =0.01) trials compared with previous periods. CONCLUSIONS: Among cardiovascular trials in the current decade, men still predominate overall, but the representation of women varies with disease and trial characteristics, and has improved in stroke and heart failure trials.
Jin et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: