On Dec. 5, 2022, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center announced that according to a new meta-analysis women were underrepresented in COVID-19 treatment clinical trials, and some racial and ethnic groups were underrepresented in COVID-19 prevention trials.

Overall, the meta-analysis examined 122 U.S.-based clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines or treatments, involving more than 175,000 participants. The selected trials were those registered on ClinicalTrials.gov or published in PubMed from October 2019 to February 2022. Only studies that provided data about enrolled participants by sex, race or ethnicity were analyzed in this study. Representation rates from trials were compared to expected rates in the U.S. COVID-19 population.

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in collaboration with researchers from Beijing and London identified system-wide differences in representation among several key demographic groups in COVID-19 prevention and treatment trials in the U.S. The study results were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.