Many blacks avoid participating in clinical trials because they distrust physicians and fear harm, a new Johns Hopkins study found.
The results come amid growing recognition of racial differences in disease rates and treatments. Researchers say some kidney diseases, stroke, lung cancer and diabetes all progress more quickly in blacks and kill more blacks than people of other racial backgrounds.
“There is enormous irony that without African-American subject participation in clinical trials, we are not going to have tested the best therapies we need to treat African-Americans,” senior researcher Neil R. Powe said in a statement.
Doctors must foster more trust among blacks, said Dr. Joel B. Braunstein, a research fellow at Johns Hopkins who led the study, which appeared Monday in the online journal Medicine.
“How can we potentially work with various patient groups to restore the trust and ensure that patients are active participants in their health care?” Braunstein asked.
Black men and women were 60 percent as likely to participate in a mock study of a heart disease medication as whites, while blacks reported higher rates of mistrust in the system and in their own doctors, the study found.
Results came from a random survey of 717 outpatients at 13 clinics in Maryland, 36 percent of whom were black and the rest white.
Hopkins calls the survey thefirst analysis showing an overestimation of risk of harm explains why blacks? participation in clinical trials has for decades lagged that of whites.
Distrust of doctors and hospitals has long been the talk among many blacks, said Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, president of the Baltimore City chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“There have been rumors and allegations of things going on right here in Baltimore City, even at Johns Hopkins University,” Cheatham said. “I remember as a kid, there were certain hospitals you didn?t want to go to because ?you?re probably not going to come out.? ”
