Physician Says Trial Enrollees Should Ask What Study Aims to Answer

Dr. Rhea Rogers, a board-certified physician speaking on the Aging Untold program, is steering people toward a different first question when they consider a clinical trial. Instead of asking whether a trial can help them, Rogers said the better prompt is: "What is this clinical trial trying to answer?"

Rogers pushes back on the idea that trials are a last resort for people who have run out of options. She said participation can put someone in front of devices, therapies and medicines that otherwise would not reach the general public for years. Rogers points people to ClinicalTrials.gov, to their own physician, and to academic centers or condition-specific organizations that run their own studies. She also said trials may cover costs such as gas, and that some studies pay participants.

Amy O'Rourke, an aging expert on the program, said the National Institutes of Health maintains a list of trials that compensate participants. O'Rourke also stressed that a participant may receive a placebo rather than the drug under study, and that people should know that going in. She said she has watched people come away from trials hopeful, and said clients who joined a local clinical trial group gained access to support groups, social workers and community resources alongside medical specialists.

Older adults are frequently missing from research, O'Rourke said. "I've heard older people called 'evidence free' because nobody really studies them," she said. "They're not included in the studies."

Gerontologist Sam Cradduck said the omission carries a practical cost. Drug metabolism differs between older and younger adults, she said, so without older participants clinicians are "walking blind." Cradduck also addressed the worry about serving as a test subject. "You're not a guinea pig," she said, adding that by the time a compound reaches a trial it has been tested repeatedly and that any prescribed medication carries adverse effects.

Cradduck said approvals depend on trials. "You can't have a new medicine come out without a clinical trial. It's not going to be approved," she said. "If we want new medications, if we want new hope, we have to have these clinical trials."