TUESDAY, Sept. 13, 2022 (HealthDay News) — The proportion of adolescents and young adults (AYAs; aged 15 to 39 years) enrolled in clinical trials increased after launch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) in 2014, according to a study published online Sept. 12 in Cancer.
Hari Sankaran, M.D., from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues examined accrual data from the NCI Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) cooperative group-led treatment trials to assess enrollment of newly diagnosed AYA patients during 2004 to 2019, especially comparing the periods before and after implementation of the NCI NCTN. A set of 304 trials that met predetermined criteria were included; 151,117 patients were analyzable, including 15,983 AYA patients.
The researchers found that AYA accrual comprised 9.5 and 14.0 percent at pre- and post-NCTN, respectively. The results were similar in sensitivity analyses restricting the pre-NCTN time period to 2010 to 2014 and including non-U.S. resident patients.
“After the launch of the NCTN, the proportion of AYA patients from a total enrollment in NCI CTEP-sponsored clinical trials for newly diagnosed cancers has increased,” the authors write.
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