Diversity trends in traumatic brain injury clinical trials in the United States

This study aims to understand the demographic representation of patients in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) clinical trials by evaluating the proportions of patients from various demographic categories amongst completed TBI clinical trials in the United States.

ClinicalTrials.gov was queried for active TBI clinical trials. One hundred and eight completed trials in the United States were selected based on inclusion criteria, and information regarding intervention, setting, age, sex, race, and ethnicity was extracted. 2002-2006 TBI incidence data was obtained from the CDC. Chi-squared testing was applied to analyze the relationship between distributions of race and sex in the collected clinical trials and the national TBI data, and logistic regression was conducted to identify variables that may predict reporting of race or ethnicity.

About 53.7% of selected clinical trials reported racial data and 34.3% reported ethnicity data. Logistic regression identified that clinical trials in defined phases were more likely to report racial data (p = 0.047 [1.015, 9.603]).

Current TBI trials do not consistently report race or ethnicity data. Future efforts to ensure equitable representation in clinical trials may involve reform of recruitment processes and accountability measures implemented within the grant application process to ensure proper racial and ethnicity data reporting.