The first study of its kind, CHIMES will look at how the drug Ocrevus works in minority groups that are underrepresented in most clinical trials.
CHIMES will try to determine what accounts for faster MS progression among Black and Hispanic
Americans.iStock
For decades, certain minority groups — including Black and Hispanic Americans — have been underrepresented in clinical trials examining new drugs. This has been especially true in trials of treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS).
One common MS treatment, Ocrevus (ocrelizumab), has had low numbers of minority participants in its clinical trials so far. In studies that compared Ocrevus with another treatment, Rebif (interferon beta-1a), 91 percent of participants were white, 4 percent were Black or African American, and 5 percent belonged to other racial or ethnic groups.
And in a study that compared Ocrevus with a placebo (inactive treatment), 94 percent of participants were white, 2 percent were Black or African American, and 4 percent belonged to other groups.
In each of these studies, minority enrollment was so low that the researchers couldn’t determine any significant differences or similarities between racial or ethnic groups. In fact, the published studies didn’t even show results by race or ethnicity, as noted in an editorial published in January 2019 in the journal CNS Spectrums.
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