The Importance of Minorities in Clinical Research
Healthcare Innovation - Chicago has a long history of including minority populations in research
By Nusrat Deen
In the 1990's blood pressure studies that began to include patients from Cook County Hospital, now known as Stroger, on Chicago’s West Side, helped prove that blood pressure medications needed to be changed in the African American population.
For decades, Black men and women were dying of strokes and heart attacks at much higher rates than whites and other populations because medications like ACE inhibitors that were commonly used to treat hypertension simply didn’t work as well or at all in the African American population.
But the Antihypertensive and Lipid- Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT) study began to change research and clinical trials for the better. This randomized, double-blind, active-controlled clinical trial conducted from early 1994 through March 2002 was critical in addressing cardiovascular issues in Blacks.
It was massive trial with 33,000 participants including Black Americans age 55 and older with hypertension and at least one other coronary heart disease risk factor from 623 North American centers including Chicago’s Stroger Hospital, a December 2002 JAMA article reported.
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