Women are missing in trials of drugs and vaccines for HIV
SGWHC applauds the work of Dr. Mirjam Curno, managing editor of the Journal of the International AIDS Society. This review, published in the September 8 issue, was a PubMed search to identify studies of AIDS antiretroviral drugs (ARV), vaccines (VAX), and curative strategies (CURE). She reported on numbers of women included, funding sources, and country of study, among other things.
Dr. Curno and her colleagues found that women comprise:
19% of the ARV studies
38% of the VAX studies
11% of the CURE studies
Another striking finding emerges when she reports on the funding sources. These were not correlated with the VAX or CURE studies, but were statistically significant in the ARV studies. ARV trials funded by private non-commercial sources had the highest proportion of women, while publicly funded trials had the lowest. Somewhat surprisingly, the ARV trials funded by NIH showed the lowest participation as compared to the other sources. (19.6% vs 22.3%, p=0.001)
Dr. Monica Gandhi, a UCSF HIV Specialist, was quoted by Lisa Rappaport in an October Reuters Health article: “When I take care of an HIV-infected woman in my clinic, I do not know if this new and exciting treatment or strategy applies specifically to her if the trial did not include enough people in the study that look like her.”
The authors conclude that “There is an urgent need to ensure that HIV clinical studies consider sex/gender dimensions.”
ABSTRACT located: HERE