AS DRUGS companies increasingly focus on how different groups of patients
respond to a particular medication, a study has shown for the first time that
grouping people by race is not the best way to do this.
“It’s a great step forward to show that race labels are not needed as a
guide,” says Rochelle Long, programme director of the Pharmacogenetics Research
Network at the US National Institutes of Health.
Many modern trials look at whether particular ethnic groups might be more or
less sensitive to the drug being tested. Companies can now try to get approval
for a drug even if it only works for a particular group rather than the
population in general. In March this year, the Food and Drug Administration said
it would approve a heart drug called BiDil specifically for Afro-Americans if
the results of a late-stage trial are positive.
But the latest study, led