I recently wrote about how the paucity of medications approved for children forces pediatricians to prescribe ‘off-label’ and figure out doses. But there is hope in new laws and initiatives that are changing the way clinical trials for children are designed and carried out. The next step is to increase child enrollment in these clinical trials. Experts in this area suggest the following strategies to do just that:
- Draw blood from patients who are already taking off-label medications for an illness, rather than recruiting only new patients
- Let doctors decide which drugs and doses to administer to treat certain infections, within clinical trial protocols, and report results to the trial
- Expand eligibility by reducing the factors that must be present to include or exclude participants
- Build on existing adult data on drug efficacy, to move faster to research on pediatric safety and dosing
- Include adolescents in adult trials, as there is evidence they react to drugs similarly to adults
Do you have additional strategies to suggest?
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Patrick Boyle
Staff Writer
Association of American Medical Colleges
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