Fireworks illuminate the Eiffel Tower in Paris as France celebrates Bastille Day but also remembers the victims of the attack in Nice one year ago.
Fewer than 8% have access to newer treatments
Two decades ago, Luis Antonio Cabrera received devastating news: He likely had only three months to live.
The Puerto Rican truck driver, then 50, had attributed his growing leg pain to spending so many hours on the road. The real culprit was a malignant tumor in his left kidney that was pressing on nerves from his lower spine.
His initial treatment involved removing the organ, a complex surgery that, by itself, proved insufficient, as the cancerous cells had already spread to his lungs. His primary care physician in Puerto Rico then contacted doctors at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and managed to enroll Cabrera in a medical study to test an innovative therapy: transplanting blood stem cells to destroy the cancer cells.
Today, at 70, Cabrera, a father of five and grandparent who moved to West Virginia with his wife to be closer to NIH, feels strong and healthy. “I come to do tests every six months — I’m like a patient at large,” he said.
However, Cabrera is one of a relatively small number of Hispanics who participate in clinical trials. “Less than 8% of enrollees are Hispanic, even though Hispanics comprise 17% of the population,” said Eliseo Pérez-Stable, director of NIH’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
That means not only do Hispanics have less access to experimental cutting-edge treatments, but researchers have less data on how a drug works in that population. Studies have shown that different ethnic groups might respond differently to treatments. The lack of patients from minority groups is an endemic problem in clinical trials; minorities typically are represented at a very low rate.
“Studies should represent the demographics of the country,” said Jonca Bull, an assistant commissioner on minority health at the Food and Drug Administration. “We need to close that gap so we can better understand how a particular drug or therapy works in different communities.”
There are many reasons why Latinos do not enroll in these studies, Perez-Stable said. Lack of information, disparities in ac-