Yazzie GA¹, Cayatineto HW¹, Clyde CS¹, Grunther B² and de Soto JA¹*

¹Laboratory of Pharmacogenetics and Health Care Disparities, School of STEM, Dine College, USA
²Department of Information Technology, Dine College, USA

*Corresponding Author: de Soto JA, Laboratory of Pharmacogenetics and Health Care Disparities, School of STEM, Dine College, USA.

Received: August 08, 2021; Published: August 19, 2021

Abstract

Introduction: Each year there are 150,000 new cases of colon cancer in the United States. The chance of death for Hispanics and Native Americans who get colon cancer is much higher than whites even though both groups are much less likely to get colon cancer than whites. In this study, we look at the inclusion or exclusion of Hispanics and Native Americans from colon cancer clinical trials.

Methods: In this retrospective study, 48 colon cancer clinical trials in the United States with an aggregate of 421,530 participants performed within the last ten years were selected at random. These clinical trials were evaluated for the inclusion and exclusion of minorities.

Results: Though whites make up only 60.1% of the population they make up 89% of the colon cancer clinical trial participants. African Americans, and Hispanics who make up 13.4% and 18.5% of the population only made up 5.6% and 0.6% of the colon cancer clinical trial participants. Only two native Americans out of 421,530 colon cancer clinical trial participants could be identified.

Conclusion: Colon Cancer Clinical trials have systematically excluded Hispanics and Native Americans while minimizing the participation of African Americans. This may be directly related to the increased death rates seen in these groups and provides evidence for the non-generalizability of colon cancer clinical trials.

Keywords: Colon Cancer; Clinical Trials; Native Americans; Hispanics; African Americans; Health Care Disparities; Racism; Pharmacogenetics

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Citation

Citation: de Soto JA., et al. “Colon Cancer: The Exclusion of Native Americans and Hispanics from Clinical Trials in the United States”.Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 5.9 (2021): 99-104.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 de Soto JA., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.