<
https://theconversation.com/the-bias-in-medical-research-africa-carries-a-huge-disease-burden-but-is-missing-from-clinical-trials-280611>
"Modern medicine prides itself on being a universal science, built on evidence
from clinical trials.
But there’s a bias in medical research. While Africa accounts for roughly 25%
of the global disease burden and 19% of the global population, the continent’s
people are largely invisible in some clinical trials.
The scale of the erasure is revealed in a landmark study of 2,472 randomised
controlled trials globally published between 2019 and 2024.
I led this team of researchers, who scrutinised the world’s most influential
medical publications to quantify African representation. They included the
New
England Journal of Medicine,
The Lancet, the
Journal of the American
Medical Association,
Nature Medicine, and the
British Medical Journal.
There were also three leading cardiovascular journals in the study:
Circulation, the
European Heart Journal and the
Journal of the American
College of Cardiology.
I am a physician-scientist working at the intersection of cardiometabolic
epidemiology and biomedical data science. I also focus on large-scale
population studies in Africa and data-driven cardiovascular prevention.
Randomised controlled trials are a cornerstone of evidence-based medicine.
Introduced in the mid-20th century, they rigorously evaluate the safety and
effectiveness of treatments by randomly assigning participants to different
groups. This is done to minimise bias. Trials like these have been central to
major medical breakthroughs, from cardiovascular therapies to vaccines. They
continue to guide clinical decisions and the development of new treatments
worldwide."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
