References
Including people with HIV in non-HIV clinical trials
Abstract
As HIV has transitioned from an acute to a chronic, managed condition, the quality of life and life expectancy of people living with HIV have both improved significantly. The new health challenges for people living and ageing with HIV are the prevention and treatment of non-HIV conditions. But what information do we have about how treatments for non-HIV conditions may impact on a person living with HIV and their antiretroviral (ARV) medication?
As HIV has transitioned from an acute to a chronic, managed condition, the quality of life and life expectancy of people living with HIV have both improved significantly. The new health challenges for people living and ageing with HIV are the prevention and treatment of non-HIV conditions. But what information do we have about how treatments for non-HIV conditions may impact on a person living with HIV and their antiretroviral (ARV) medication?
Data gaps in pharmacological data are not unusual. The need for clinical trials to gather ‘clean’ data and guarantee commercial gain often leads to the exclusion of ‘complicating factors’, such as participants with pre-existing conditions or other groups such as women of child-bearing age or those perceived as ‘hard to reach’. The result is that medication-related data is skewed, for example, towards mainly white cisgender males (Criado Perez, 2019).
The lack of Black and ethnic minority groups included in clinical trials has been highlighted in cancer care (Iyizoba-Ebozue et al, 2022) and cardiology (Clark et al, 2019). Recently, there have been attempts to include more diversity in clinical trials. The UK's Health Research Authority (2024) has been working in collaboration with the Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency to produce guidelines that ensure research includes people who could be impacted by the findings.
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