Hotel Gołębiewski - Mikołajki,Wisła,Karpacz, Białystok-TAGO.

[miniming]

Fear Of Covid-19 Might Make Cancer Survivors Less Likely To Enroll In Clinical Trials: Study



The Covid-19 pandemic has halted or delayed scientific research to a great extent. In the United States, it has also resulted in a drastic decrease in enrollment in National Cancer Institute-sponsored cancer clinical trials, particularly in areas most affected by Covid-19.

Many cancer clinical trials’ sites have temporarily paused enrollment because of several restrictions enforced by institutions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Yet, it remains unclear if cancer survivors would be willing to participate in clinical research as they did before the outbreak of the virus — particularly when Covid-19 transmission is taking place among communities.

To gain a better understanding of whether cancer survivors would be willing to enroll for clinical trials or not, in the journal JAMA Oncology, three researchers examined a large group of survivors’ attitudes towards trial participation during the pandemic.

The researchers included participants from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network’s Survivor Views panel that was established in September 2019. The participants were 18 years or older who were diagnosed or treated for cancer within the last five years. All of them were U.S. residents.

A series of Covid-19 related questions were designed regarding the cancer survivors’ disposition towards trials, their willingness to participate, and the reasons for why they would choose not to enroll for cancer clinical trials.

MORE FOR YOU : pg

These questions were the sent to 3,054 participants on May 27, 2020 through June 17, 2020. The researchers received a total of 933 responses.

Among these 933 respondents, 73.1% of them were female and 3.6% were Black. Additionally, 36.6% of them had an annual income of $60,000 or less. While 33.9% of the cancer survivors had a conversation about clinical trials with their physicians, only 20.6% or 192 of them were offered to participate in clinical trials.

Out of that, 150 of them said yes but only 116 cancer survivors eventually enrolled in clinical trials. That put the overall participation rate at 12.4%.

Among the 662 cancer survivors who were not offered trial participation, 519 (78.4%) reported being somewhat or very likely to enroll if offered a chance to participate in a clinical trial.

While all of the cancer survivors were asked if the pandemic made them more or less likely to participate in a clinical trial — or if it made no difference — out of the 907 participants, the majority (721 or 79.5%) indicated that the Covid-19 pandemic made no difference on their decision to enroll.

The remaining 164 or 18.1% of cancer survivors were more than 7 times more likely to indicate that the pandemic made them hesitant to enroll in a clinical trial.

The researchers observed that these response patterns were similar irrespective of demographic, socioeconomic, and care settings.

The reasons for the 164 cancer survivors who were less likely to enroll for clinical trials was the fear of increased COVID-19 exposure (70.1%) or having difficulties in accessing health care during the pandemic (18.3%).

[Reklama]