Opinion: If pharma can market to youths by TikTok, it should include them in clinical trials
The pharmaceutical industry has rapidly adapted to promoting prescription drugs to young people on TikTok, Instagram, and other social media platforms, yet it can’t be troubled to include adolescents and young adults in clinical trials for these products. The industry needs to address this hypocrisy.
Children, adolescents, and young adults are physically different from adults. It seems obvious, but the industry has not yet caught up to this fact. In a clinical trial of tofacitinib (Xeljanz), a drug approved for people living with forms of inflammatory bowel disease, the participants range in age from 18 to 65 years. For adalimumab (Humira), a similar drug, the mean age of clinical trial participants was around 40 years.
