Men's Health America
Males Now 38% of Research Participants
February 6, 2003
The National Institutes of Health has recently released its
tally of sex-specific participation in research studies it awards to
universities and hospitals.
According to the NIH report, "Monitoring Adherence to the NIH Policy on the Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Subjects in Clinical Research," 9.7 million patients participated in NIH extramural research grants in 2000 (Table 1). Of the 9.7 million persons, 5.9 million were female and 3.7 million were male. Thus, males represented 38.4% of the total.
The reason for the shortfall in male participation is the disparity in single-sex studies. According to Table C of the report, the NIH funded 975 all-female and only 360 all-male studies in 2000. Many of the all-female studies addressed conditions that also affect men, such as osteoporosis, conditions of aging, obesity, domestic violence, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, AIDS, and other conditions (Table C-1).
The entire report can be viewed online at http://www4.od.nih.gov/orwh/bluerpt.pdf
NIH began tracking sex-specific enrollment in research studies in the early 1990s, in response to Congressional concerns that women might be underrepresented in medical research. The first tally revealed that women were in fact well-represented, constituting 51.8% of all research subjects in 1994.
Despite evidence that women were being included in the vast majority of clinical trials, the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health engaged in a variety of efforts to increase female enrollments, resulting in the current imbalance in sex-specific participation.
Carey Roberts
