New study questions clinical trial data for kidney cancer drugs

When prescribing newly-approved drugs, physicians rely on data from clinical trials to understand the benefits and risks of those drugs for patients.

However, a study published in the Journal of Oncology Practice, reported by EurekAlert, showed that for certain cancer drugs, participants in clinical trials are often not representative of the patients that ultimately take them, raising questions about the direct applicability of trial data.

"We found that patients participating in clinical trials are younger and healthier than many of the patients who are receiving these drugs in the clinical setting," said Aaron Mitchell, Hematology/Oncology Fellow at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Medical Center, USA, and the paper's lead author.