White children overrepresented in pediatric eye disease studies
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Key takeaways:
- Racial and ethnic disparities exist in pediatric eye disease studies relative to the general U.S. pediatric population.
- Female participants were proportionately represented in studies.
Black, Hispanic and Asian children have been underrepresented in Pediatric Eye Disease Investigator Group clinical studies relative to the general U.S. population, according to a study published in JAMA Ophthalmology.
“The Pediatric Eye Disease Investigator Group (PEDIG) was founded in 1997 to address clinical knowledge gaps in pediatric ophthalmology through clinical trials and prospective data collection,” Qais A. Dihan, BS, of Chicago Medical School and UAMS Harvey and Bernice Jones Eye Institute in Arkansas, and colleagues wrote. “PEDIG was founded as a multicenter network, in part to facilitate a greater base of representation for the pediatric patients included in its studies. Representation remains paramount for the generalizability of study findings in pediatric ophthalmology.”
To determine whether PEDIG participant demographics are representative of the U.S. pediatric population, Dihan and colleagues conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional analysis of PEDIG studies from Dec. 1, 1997, to Sept. 12, 2022. They included 11,658 participants (mean age, 5.9 years; 50.8% girls) from 41 studies and compared enrollment percentages of female, white, Black, Hispanic, Asian and other race participants with the 2010 U.S. Census pediatric population.
According to results, the median rate of representation for white participants was 72.8% compared with 14.1% for Hispanic participants, 7.4% for Black participants, 4% for other and 1.8% for Asian participants. Females made up a median 49.4% of participants and were represented proportionately.
Compared with the U.S. Census data, white participants were overrepresented (enrollment-census difference [ECD] = 0.19) and Black (ECD = –0.07), Asian (ECD = –0.03) and Hispanic (ECD = –0.09) participants were underrepresented (P < .001).
Further, inclusion in a study with more than 200 participants or in a study on strabismus was linked to increased odds of under- or overrepresentation.
“Changes implemented in enrollment practices by PEDIG seek to address these disparities and may serve as a model to facilitate more diverse clinical study enrollment,” Dihan and colleagues wrote. “Further efforts and time are still required to fully assess the impact of these changes in reducing or eliminating these disparities.”
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