Close Close
Sign In
Newsletters
Popular Financial Topics Discover relevant content from across the suite of ALM legal publications From the Industry More content from ThinkAdvisor and select sponsors Investment Advisor Issue Gallery Read digital editions of Investment Advisor Magazine Tax Facts Get clear, current, and reliable answers to pressing tax questions
Luminaries Awards
Podcast Center Video Center Webcasts Resource Center Events
About ThinkAdvisor Contact Us Advertise With Us Asset & Logo Licensing Sitemap Terms of Service Privacy Policy Copyright © 2024 ALM Global, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
ThinkAdvisor

Life Health > Health Insurance

Medical research will now include elderly

By staff Writer

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

A new trend in healthcare, known as comparative effectiveness research (CER), in which drugs, devices and therapies are studied to determine their effectiveness for a given population, is being expanded to include treatments for elderly patients.

The practice of CER was bolstered by the passage of 2009′s economic stimulus bill, which allocated $1.1 billion to build up the CER infrastructure and pay for research. In addition, the healthcare reform law established a new nonprofit, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which will help determine research priorities.

At a recent seminar hosted by the Brookings Institution, government officials, academics, researchers and representatives from private companies gathered to discuss the importance of evaluating medical interventions in a wide variety of patients.

The director of the National Institute on Aging, Richard Hodes, discussed the importance of including the elderly in such studies. Historically, the elderly have been excluded from such studies, as researchers assumed their existing health problems made them poor subjects.However, as Hodes urged, it is vital that such patients be included in research in order to fully understand the effects of a given treatment.

A recent study of diabetes prevention, which included elderly patients, uncovered the fact that the drug metformin was not at all effective in the elderly despite its effectiveness in younger people. Instead, diet and exercise were found to be a superior treatment for elderly patients. Findings such as this one illustrate the importance of CER.

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.