Experts in the design and conduct of medical research found that black men and women were only 60 percent as likely as whites to participate in a mock study to test a pill for heart disease.
The study comes at a time of increased recognition of racial differences in disease rates and treatments, Johns Hopkins said in a statement, adding that some kidney diseases, stroke, lung cancer and diabetes all progress more quickly in blacks and kill more blacks than people of other racial backgrounds.
"There is enormous irony that without African-American subject participation in clinical trials, we are not going to have tested the best therapies we need to treat African Americans," says study senior researcher, Hopkins internist and epidemiologist Neil R. Powe.
The study, believed to be the first analysis showing that an overestimation of risk of harm explains why blacks' participation in clinical trials has for decades lagged that of whites, is published in the journal Medicine.
