\n<\/p>\n
People aged over 75 are being excluded from health research due to arbitrary age cut-offs, potentially stalling the development of life-saving treatments, leading charities and research institutes have warned.<\/p>\n
Some clinical studies restrict participation for older people due to concerns about the potential frailty of participants and a belief that age may reduce the effect of the drug or device being studied.<\/p>\n
Such restrictions are contributing to health inequity by excluding an important demographic from medical research, according to more than 40 charities and leading research funders, including the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, and the Medical Research Council.<\/p>\n
Their joint statement warned that these age restrictions are unethical and lead to \u201cresearch not being representative of the groups who have [the] most disease\u201d.<\/p>\n
The statement added: \u201c[These restrictions] can result in treatments that are less effective for the very people who most need support \u2026 These exclusions are rarely justified and fail to align with the principles of equity and scientific excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n
One example of this exclusion is dementia research, where only one in 10 people living with the disease are offered the opportunity to take part, with participation one of the biggest barriers to progress in this area, according to the Alzheimer\u2019s Society.<\/p>\n
Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, has warned that older adults are being \u201cfrequently left out of research that directly affects their care\u201d, despite \u201coften having the highest levels of need\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis exclusion can lead to gaps in evidence, less effective treatments, and care that isn\u2019t properly tailored to those who use services the most. As the population ages, it\u2019s essential that research reflects the people it aims to serve,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some clinical studies have imposed age restrictions out of a misconception that older people with multiple morbidities could skew research results, while some studies are not designed in a way to accommodate older people, for example by requiring frequent visits to test centres that may be far away from where the participants live.<\/p>\n
The NIHR, which is the biggest health funder in the UK, said that the low proportion of older adults participating in research is both a scientific and ethical concern.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWe should not assume that treatments that work in healthy, younger people will have the same effect in older adults,\u201d said Prof Terry Quinn, the ageing lead at the NIHR. \u201cSo excluding the predominant users of health and social care from research is at best inefficient, and at worst may produce misleading results.\u201d<\/p>\n The health minister Karin Smyth said: \u201cWe know that older people are more likely to face long-term health conditions like cancer and dementia \u2013 yet recent data shows that only one in seven people taking part in vital medical research studies are over 75.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we want tomorrow\u2019s treatments to work for everyone today, older people must be part of the research that creates them. Through our 10-year health plan, we\u2019re turbocharging research and clinical trials \u2013 including by the NIHR launching a UK-wide recruitment drive for participants to get involved in research.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" People aged over 75 are being excluded from health research due to arbitrary age cut-offs, potentially stalling the development of life-saving treatments, leading charities and research institutes have warned. Some clinical studies restrict participation for older people due to concerns about the potential frailty of participants and a belief that age may reduce the effect<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[983,1489,8652,3140,7984,364,3141,1952],"class_list":{"0":"post-15054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-charities","9":"tag-elderly","10":"tag-excluded","11":"tag-medical","12":"tag-older","13":"tag-people","14":"tag-research","15":"tag-warn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}