A Systematic Review to Describe the Demographic Diversity of Dermatologic Clinical Trial Participants for Common Dermatologic Diseases

The US population is rapidly diversifying, and according to the US Census Bureau’s 2014 National Projections report, more than half of the US population is projected to be represented by minority groups by 2044(L.Colby & Ortman, 2015). Existing literature supports that responses to and adverse events due to drugs, including dermatologic drugs(Taylor, 2002), can differ between population subgroups(Conforti et al., 2018; Ramamoorthy, Pacanowski, Bull, & Zhang, 2015). NIH and FDA policies and guidelines call for adequate inclusion of women and minorities in clinical trials and other clinical research(National Institute of Health, 2001, 2017). However, despite federal efforts, emerging data suggest that clinical trials, including for dermatologic conditions, suffer from under-reporting of demographic data and under-representation of minorities(Charrow, Xia, Joyce, & Mostaghimi, 2017; Chen, Lara, Dang, Paterniti, & Kelly, 2014). There is limited literature on the diversity of clinical trials in dermatology, thus, additional and more detailed studies describing the current composition of dermatologic clinical trial populations are warranted.