Ethical Challenges of Clinical Research in Children

Neubauer, David; Laitinen-Parkkonen, Pirjo; Matthys, D.

doi:10.1159/000097775

Cited by 1 publication

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“…It also reflected frustration in the daily life of clinical pharmacologists and pediatricians who had to explain every day to parents that this or that drug was not approved for use in children. High academic hopes accompanied pharmaceutical pediatric legislation [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ].…”

Section: Reflections On Pharmaceutical Pediatric Legislationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Ethical Challenge for Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)/Ethics Committees (ECs) in the Assessment of Pediatric Clinical Trials

Rose¹,

Kummer

2015

Children

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Both the US and EU have introduced pediatric pharmaceutical legislation to facilitate clinical trials in children and development of better medicines for children. The first concerns were published in 2014 that the European Medicines Agency (EMA)’s Pediatric Committee (PDCO) may be over-enthusiastic and has compelled questionable pediatric clinical trials from pharmaceutical companies. Numerous clinical trials are mandated in rare conditions for which not enough patients exist for even one trial. Furthermore, where these trials are mandated in adolescent patients, the legal age limit of the 18th birthday is confused with a medical age limit and can result in separate clinical trials in adolescent patients that neither make medical nor scientific sense nor will ever recruit enough patients for a meaningful outcome. To confirm our concerns we searched the registry clinicaltrials.gov and found examples for PDCO-triggered unethical trials. We conclude that such trials should not be accepted by institutional review boards (IRBs)/ethics committees (ECs) and that clinical trials resulting from negotiations with EMA’s PDCO need extra careful scrutiny by IRBs/ECs in order to prevent unethical studies and damage to pediatric research and unnecessary risks to pediatric patients.

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Section: Reflections On Pharmaceutical Pediatric Legislationmentioning

confidence: 99%