Health
Cardiovascular disease trials not reporting sex-specific results
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Feb. 19, 2007
Women are increasingly included in cardiovascular clinical studies, but sex-specific data often is not readily available, according to a study in the February Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
"We need to be able to tell women whether the diagnostic tests we order are accurate and how treatments will affect them, but today we don't have enough data specific to women," said Sharonne Hayes, MD, one of the paper's authors and director of the Mayo Clinic's Women's Heart Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Researchers analyzed cardiovascular-related studies in seven leading general medical and cardiology journals in the last half of 2004. Sex-specific data often was lacking with only 24% of the 628 relevant papers including it, although general medical journals were more likely to do this than cardiovascular-specific ones. Trials funded by the National Institutes of Health also were more likely to include this kind of information than those financed from other sources.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/02/19/hlbf0219.htm.
