Dr George Bakris Speaks About Increasing Minority Representation in CKD Trials

In the FIDELIO-DKD trial researchers purposely recruited centers that had very large African American databases, said George Bakris, MD, professor of medicine and director of the American Heart Association Comprehensive Hypertension Center at the University of Chicago Medicine.

Transcript

In FIDELIO-DKD, only 4.7% of patients identified themselves as Black. Is the FIGARO-DKD trial more diverse?

The FIGARO trial is going to be similar to the FIDELIO trial. Let me just make a point. For the audience listening, if you remember the African American Study of Kidney Disease, I was one of the principal investigators and writers of that study. That was a study of pure African Americans, over 1094 African Americans. There were very many African American investigators in that trial. It took an act of God to recruit that trial. African Americans don't willingly come to clinical trials for a variety of reasons. I made it a major point, as a principal investigator, to try to get at least 10% African Americans in the [FIDELIO] trial. We purposely recruited centers that had very large African American databases, so that we could recruit. And yet we ended up with this. So it's not that we didn't try. It's not that we don't appreciate it. It's just that it's very difficult to do. Having said that, looking at the database, the trends in the African Americans were very similar to the trends seen in the overall population. So that is gratifying.