
Women not underrepresented in clinical trials
By Marcel Hobma, | 23 October, 2020
A Dutch advocacy group claims that women receive worse care than men, because pharmaceutical companies do not sufficiently test their medicines on women. A shocking message, for which there is no evidence. In fact, The Investigative Desk found that in reality, more than 60 percent of patients in last year’s phase 3 trials were female.
Shortly before covid-19 hit the Netherlands, two members of Dutch parliament demanded that clinical research on women should be structurally improved. The letters to the Minister for Healthcare were prompted by the Dutch advocacy group Women Inc., which has been keeping this topic on the public agenda for the last five years.
According to the organisation, pharmaceutical researchers neglect women when developing new medicines, testing medicines mostly on men. As a result, women would receive worse care than men. Moreover, women would suffer more adverse drug reactions.
According to our investigation , these claims lack substantial evidence. We investigated all medicines with a ‘new active substance’ (24 in total) that were accepted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) between spring 2019 and spring 2020. Of the total number of patients that took part in phase-3 clinical trials, 63 percent were female. Almost three quarters of the trials were subjected to sex specific analysis.
According to several clinical researchers, the effect of medicines differ only marginally between men and women. The fact that women report more adverse drug events is not necessarily related to the clinical research methodology: women communicate differently about their health, take more medication in general and perhaps notice and report adverse drug events at an earlier stage.
Read the full article in the Dutch Journal of Medicine (NTvG).
More investigations

Leaked documents prove unknown connections between Russia and the Dutch political party PVV
The Kremlin has been trying to develop ties with the Dutch political party PVV since 2013. And with success. The party figures prominently in Russian

Is Geert Wilders more lenient on asylum?
In the run-up to the national elections, Geert Wilders, leader of the political party PVV, took the “sharp edges” off his asylum views. He also lower

The Investigative Desk Newsletter November Q3 2023
Read the full newsletter here. Dear reader, We’ve been extremely busy developing projects and writing subsidyapplications, so we upload this newslette

How a university assists the agricultural lobby in approving pesticides
The agrochemical industry is using Wageningen University in agriculture to set its own rules for the approval of pesticides and genetic technology. Th

Chemours’ Pfas verdict is a warning to all polluting companies
In a historic ruling, the court ruled that Chemours is liable for pollution damage in Dordrecht. This seems to open the way to millions of claims, cri

The hidden pfas problem that no one is addressing
Massive amounts of “ultra short” pfas are everywhere: in the environment, in drinking water and even in beer. These potentially dangerous substances h