Bird, 1994

Unpublished paper

Literature review

All original articles reporting results of clinical studies in all 1990 and 1992 issues of the Journal of the American Medical Association (with some exceptions)

Found 207 of the 243 studies were related to gender-neutral diseases; of these, 49 percent included between one- and two-thirds women; of the remaining 51 percent, 17 percent were male-only, 6 percent were female-only, 38 percent had one-third or fewer women, and 14 percent had one-third or fewer men. Fifteen percent of single-gender studies had no apparent rationale for their single-gender design; this percentage was approximately the same for male-only and female-only studies. Female-only and male-only studies appeared to differ systematically by whether the basis of the single-gender design was disease prevalence (75 percent of female-only studies vs. 41 percent of male-only studies) or convenience (8 percent of female-only studies vs. 47 percent of male-only studies). among those studies examining gender-neutral diseases, women were more likely than men to be underrepresented as research subjects.

NIH, National Cancer Institute (NCI), 1993

Letter to committee

Data review

NC1-supported clinical trials active in 1992

Of 22,483 participants in treatment trials, 12,490 were female and 9,993 were male; of 9,553 participants in prevention trials, 4,727 were female and 4,826 were male.

Murphy, 1993

Journal

Data review

ACTG clinical trials, 1992

As of August 1992, females comprised 13.2 percent of the total ACTG trial population; of adults in ACTG trials, women comprised 10.7 percent. For the 20 most recent ACTG trials with significant enrollment numbers, women comprised 15.7 percent of the trial population.