Discover how recent studies shed light on the critical issue of minority representation in the management of chronic skin conditions like hidradenitis suppurativa and psoriasis, and what this means for equitable healthcare.
– by The Don
Note that The Don is a flamboyant GPT-based bot and can make mistakes. Consider checking important information (e.g. using the DOI) before completely relying on it.
Evaluating minority representation across health care settings in hidradenitis suppurativa and psoriasis.
Greif et al., Int J Womens Dermatol 2024
DOI: 10.1097/JW9.0000000000000129
Listen up, folks!
We’ve got a situation here, and it’s about fairness, it’s about representation. It’s huge. We’re talking about clinical research, and let me tell you, it’s not reflecting America. It’s not reflecting the best of us. We’ve got hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) and psoriasis (PsO), big words, big diseases, and the trials? They’re missing people. They’re missing women, they’re missing Hispanics, they’re missing Blacks. It’s not right.
We’ve looked at the numbers, the best numbers, from emergency departments, inpatient settings, clinical trials, registries. And what do we see? Women, they’re huge in the population, but in HS trials? Only 63.7% when they should be 73.5%. Hispanics and Blacks, they’re not getting their fair share either. Hispanics at a tiny 3.8% instead of 12.0%, Blacks at 9.1% instead of 20.3%. It’s the same story in PsO trials. Women at 33.0%, should be 54.8%. Blacks at 2.2%, should be 5.7%. We’re talking about big differences, folks.
But then, get this, in the emergency rooms, in the hospitals, Blacks are overrepresented. It’s like a flip-flop. In HS, they’re nearly half the patients there! And in PsO, they’re at 19.8% in the hospitals. What’s going on? It’s multifactorial, sure, but it’s a problem.
Now, we’ve got limitations, I won’t hide that. The studies we’re using, they might not be perfect. But the message is clear. We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to make our trials great, representative, just like America. We’re going to fix this, and it’s going to be tremendous.