Gender disparities in coronavirus disease 2019 clinical trial leadership

Authors: Cevik, Muge ;

Haque, Syed Arefinul;

Manne-Goehler, Jennifer;

Kuppalli, Krutika;

Sax, Paul E;

Majumder, Maimuna S;

Orkin, Chloe

Source: Clinical Microbiology and Infection

Full text

: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2020.12.025

Abstract

Objectives: To compare the gender distribution of clinical trial leadership in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) clinical trials.

Methods: We searched https://clinicaltrials.gov/ and retrieved all clinical trials on COVID-19 from 1 January 2020 to 26 June 2020. As a comparator group, we have chosen two fields that are not related to emerging infections and infectious diseases: and considered not directly affected by the pandemic: breast cancer and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and included studies within the aforementioned study period as well as those registered in the preceding year (pre-study period: 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019). Gender of the investigator was predicted using the genderize.io application programming interface. The repository of the data sets used to collect and analyse the data are available at https://osf.io/k2r57/.

Results: Only 27.8% (430/1548) of principal investigators among COVID-19-related studies were women, which is significantly different compared with 54.9% (156/284) and 42.1% (56/133) for breast cancer (p < 0.005) and T2DM (p < 0.005) trials over the same period, respectively. During the pre-study period, the proportion of principal investigators who were predicted to be women were 49.7% (245/493) and 44.4% (148/333) for breast cancer and T2DM trials, respectively, and the difference was not statistically significant when compared with results from the study period (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: We demonstrate that less than one-third of COVID-19-related clinical trials are led by women, half the proportion observed in non-COVID-19 trials over the same period, which remained similar to the pre-study period. These gender disparities during the pandemic may not only indicate a lack of female leadership in international clinical trials and involvement in new projects but also reveal imbalances in women's access to research

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Copyright © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder.

Cite as

Cevik, M., Haque, S., Manne-Goehler, J., Kuppalli, K., Sax, P., Majumder, M. & Orkin, C. 2021, 'Gender disparities in coronavirus disease 2019 clinical trial leadership', Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 27(7), pp. 1007-1010. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2020.12.025

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2020.12.025

Repository URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/24596