ArticleThe oncologist2023
Analysis of Female Participant Representation in Registered Oncology Clinical Trials in the United States from 2008 to 2020.
Article in The oncologist, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Worse bladder cancer outcomes in women than in men - bias, biology or both?Nature reviews. Urology · 2026Article
- Gender Oncology: Rethinking Cancer Through a Sex- and Gender-Based Lens.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Sex representation in trials relative to indication-specific disease burden in FDA-approved drugs (2015-2023).Nature communications · 2026Article
- Measuring representation in clinical trials: Simulations demonstrating how current methods fail in the context of precision medicine.PloS one · 2026Article
- Participation in U.S.-Based ALS Clinical Trials by Sex and Race.Muscle & nerve · 2026Article
- Diversity and inclusivity in oncology: A narrative review and orientation for institutional measures in Germany.Translational oncology · 2025Review
- Sex-related differences in the efficacy and toxicity of cancer treatments.Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2025Review
- Disparities in utilization of novel cancer therapies in advanced stage III and IV melanoma and variance in outcomes.Immunotherapy · 2025Article
- Review
- Transgender people in clinical trials of drugs and biologics: An analysis of ClinicalTrials.gov from 2007 to 2023.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2024Article
- Recommendations for the Application of Sex and Gender Medicine in Preclinical, Epidemiological and Clinical Research.Journal of personalized medicine · 2024Review
- Sex and survival outcomes in patients with renal cell carcinoma receiving first-line immune-based combinations.Cancer immunology, immunotherapy : CII · 2024Observational
- Review
- Sex Inequities in Clinical Trials and Trial Leadership.Kidney international reports · 2024Article
- Are sex and gender considered in head and neck cancer clinical studies?NPJ precision oncology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
20 authors at 12 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundFemale underrepresentation in oncology clinical trials can result in outcome disparities. We evaluated female participant representation in US oncology trials by intervention type, cancer site, and funding. MATERIALS AND
methodsData were extracted from the publicly available Aggregate Analysis of ClinicalTrials.gov database. Initially, 270,172 studies were identified. Following the exclusion of trials using Medical Subject Heading terms, manual review, those with incomplete status, non-US location, sex-specific organ cancers, or lacking participant sex data, 1650 trials consisting of 240,776 participants remained. The primary outcome was participation to prevalence ratio (PPR): percent females among trial participants divided by percent females in the disease population per US Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program data. PPRs of 0.8-1.2 reflect proportional female representation.
resultsFemales represented 46.9% of participants (95% CI, 45.4-48.4); mean PPR for all trials was 0.912. Females were underrepresented in surgical (PPR 0.74) and other invasive (PPR 0.69) oncology trials. Among cancer sites, females were underrepresented in bladder (odds ratio [OR] 0.48, 95% CI 0.26-0.91, P = .02), head/neck (OR 0.44, 95% CI 0.29-0.68, P < .01), stomach (OR 0.40, 95% CI 0.23-0.70, P < .01), and esophageal (OR 0.40 95% CI 0.22-0.74, P < .01) trials. Hematologic (OR 1.78, 95% CI 1.09-1.82, P < .01) and pancreatic (OR 2.18, 95% CI 1.46-3.26, P < .01) trials had higher odds of proportional female representation. Industry-funded trials had greater odds of proportional female representation (OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.09-1.82, P = .01) than US government and academic-funded trials.
conclusionsStakeholders should look to hematologic, pancreatic, and industry-funded cancer trials as exemplars of female participant representation and consider female representation when interpreting trial results.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.