Global representation of heart failure clinical trial leaders, collaborators, and enrolled participants: a bibliometric review 2000-20

Addressing the Global Burden of Cardiovascular Disease in Women: JACC State-of-the-Art Review

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are responsible for approximately 35% of all deaths in women. In 2019, the global age-standardized CVD prevalence and mortality of women were 6,403 per 100,000 and 204 per 100,000, respectively. Although the age- and population-adjusted prevalence has decreased globally, opposite trends are evident in regions of socioeconomic deprivation. Cardiovascular health and outcomes are influenced by regional socioeconomic, environmental, and community factors, in addition to health care system and individual factors. Cardiovascular care in women is commonly plagued by delayed diagnoses, undertreatment, and knowledge gaps, particularly in women-specific or women-predominant conditions. In this paper, we describe the global epidemiology of CVD and highlight multilevel determinants of cardiometabolic health. We review knowledge and health care gaps that serve as barriers to improving CVD outcomes in women. Finally, we present national, community, health care system, and research strategies to comprehensively address cardiometabolic risk and improve outcomes in women.

Regional variations in heart failure: a global perspective

Heart failure (HF) is a global public health concern that affects millions of people worldwide. While there have been significant therapeutic advancements in HF over the last few decades, there remain major disparities in risk factors, treatment patterns and outcomes across race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, country and region. Recent research has provided insight into many of these disparities, but there remain large gaps in our understanding of worldwide variations in HF care. Although the majority of the global population resides across Asia, Africa and South America, these regions remain poorly represented in epidemiological studies and HF trials. Recent efforts and registries have provided insight into the clinical profiles and outcomes across HF patterns globally. The prevalence of HF and associated risk factors has been reported and varies by country and region ranges, with minimal data on regional variations in treatment patterns and long-term outcomes. It is critical to improve our understanding of the different factors that contribute to global disparities in HF care so we can build interventions that improve our general cardiovascular health and mitigate the social and economic cost of HF. In this narrative review, we hope to provide an overview of the global and regional variations in HF care and outcomes.

Endpoint adjudication in cardiovascular clinical trials

Endpoint adjudication (EA) is a common feature of contemporary randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in cardiovascular medicine. Endpoint adjudication refers to a process wherein a group of expert reviewers, known as the clinical endpoint committee (CEC), verify potential endpoints identified by site investigators. Events that are determined by the CEC to meet pre-specified trial definitions are then utilized for analysis. The rationale behind the use of EA is that it may lessen the potential misclassification of clinical events, thereby reducing statistical noise and bias. However, it has been questioned whether this is universally true, especially given that EA significantly increases the time, effort, and resources required to conduct a trial. Herein, we compare the summary estimates obtained using adjudicated vs. non-adjudicated site designated endpoints in major cardiovascular RCTs in which both were reported. Based on these data, we lay out a framework to determine which trials may warrant EA and where it may be redundant. The value of EA is likely greater when cardiovascular trials have nuanced primary endpoints, endpoint definitions that align poorly with practice, sub-optimal data completeness, greater operator variability, and lack of blinding. EA may not be needed if the primary endpoint is all-cause death or all-cause hospitalization. In contrast, EA is likely merited for more nuanced endpoints such as myocardial infarction, bleeding, worsening heart failure as an outpatient, unstable angina, or transient ischaemic attack. A risk-based approach to adjudication can potentially allow compromise between costs and accuracy. This would involve adjudication of a small proportion of events, with further adjudication done if inconsistencies are detected.

Improving representativeness in trials: a call to action from the Global Cardiovascular Clinical Trialists Forum

Participants enrolled in cardiovascular disease (CVD) randomized controlled trials are not often representative of the population living with the disease. Older adults, children, women, Black, Indigenous and People of Color, and people living in low- and middle-income countries are typically under-enrolled in trials relative to disease distribution. Treatment effect estimates of CVD therapies have been largely derived from trial evidence generated in White men without complex comorbidities, limiting the generalizability of evidence. This review highlights barriers and facilitators of trial enrollment, temporal trends, and the rationale for representativeness. It proposes strategies to increase representativeness in CVD trials, including trial designs that minimize the research burden on participants, inclusive recruitment practices and eligibility criteria, diversification of clinical trial leadership, and research capacity-building in under-represented regions. Implementation of such strategies could generate better and more generalizable evidence to reduce knowledge gaps and position the cardiovascular trial enterprise as a vehicle to counter existing healthcare inequalities.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Clinical Research: A Path Toward Precision Health for Everyone

Healthcare disparities are a persistent societal problem. One of the contributing factors to this status quo is the lack of diversity and representativeness of research efforts, which result in nongeneralizable evidence that, in turn, provides suboptimal means to enable the best possible outcomes at the individual level. There are several strategies that research teams can adopt to improve the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) of their efforts; these strategies span the totality of the research path, from initial design to the shepherding of clinical data through a potential regulatory process. These strategies include more intentionality and DEI-based goal-setting, more diverse research and leadership teams, better community engagement to set study goals and approaches, better tailored outreach interventions, decentralization of study procedures and incorporation of innovative technology for more flexible data collection, and self-surveillance to identify and prevent biases. Within their remit of overlooking research efforts, regulatory authorities, as stakeholders, also have the potential for a positive effect on the DEI of emerging clinical evidence. All these are implementable tools and mechanisms that can make study participation more approachable to diverse communities, and ultimately generate evidence that is more generalizable and a conduit for better outcomes. The research community has an imperative to make DEI principles key foundational aspects in study conduct in order to pursue better personalized medicine for diverse patient populations.

The need for increased pragmatism in cardiovascular clinical trials

The majority of cardiovascular randomized controlled trials (RCTs) test interventions in selected patient populations under explicitly protocol-defined settings. Although these ‘explanatory’ trial designs optimize conditions to test the efficacy and safety of an intervention, they limit the generalizability of trial findings in broader clinical settings. The concept of ‘pragmatism’ in RCTs addresses this concern by providing counterbalance to the more idealized situation underpinning explanatory RCTs and optimizing effectiveness over efficacy. The central tenets of pragmatism in RCTs are to test interventions in routine clinical settings, with patients who are representative of broad clinical practice, and to reduce the burden on investigators and participants by minimizing the number of trial visits and the intensity of trial-based testing. Pragmatic evaluation of interventions is particularly important in cardiovascular diseases, where the risk of death among patients has remained fairly stable over the past few decades despite the development of new therapeutic interventions. Pragmatic RCTs can help to reveal the ‘real-world’ effectiveness of therapeutic interventions and elucidate barriers to their implementation. In this Review, we discuss the attributes of pragmatism in RCT design, conduct and interpretation as well as the general need for increased pragmatism in cardiovascular RCTs. We also summarize current challenges and potential solutions to the implementation of pragmatism in RCTs and highlight selected ongoing and completed cardiovascular RCTs with pragmatic trial designs.

In this Review, Khan and colleagues discuss the benefits and challenges of including pragmatism in the design, conduct and interpretation of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for cardiovascular disease and highlight selected ongoing and completed cardiovascular RCTs that incorporate a pragmatic design.

Most cardiovascular randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted to date have been ‘explanatory’, that is, designed to study the intervention in optimized conditions with selected patient populations and frequent protocolized assessments.

Although explanatory RCT designs increase validity, they limit the generalizability of trial findings, whereas a ‘pragmatic’ approach to RCTs yields findings more relevant to real-world practice.

In pragmatic RCTs, interventions are tested in patients who are broadly representative of the condition being studied, and the study is aligned with routine clinical care to reduce costs and organizational burden.

Although pragmatic RCTs tend to attenuate estimates of treatment effects, they do provide a more realistic understanding of population-level effectiveness and costs than explanatory trials.

Pragmatic trials can highlight barriers to the implementation of therapies and are better suited than explanatory RCTs to assessing the effects of implementation strategies and health-care policies at the population level.

Widespread implementation of pragmatic trials would require the development of technological infrastructure to collect and share data as well as regulatory guidelines amenable to findings derived from routinely collected data.

Improving Enrollment of Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Populations in Heart Failure Trials: A Call to Action From the Heart Failure Collaboratory

Importance

Despite bearing a disproportionate burden of heart failure (HF), Black and Hispanic individuals have been poorly represented in HF clinical trials. Underrepresentation in clinical trials limits the generalizability of the findings to these populations and may even introduce uncertainties and hesitancy when translating trial data to the care of people from underrepresented groups. The Heart Failure Collaboratory, a consortium of stakeholders convened to enhance HF therapeutic development, has been dedicated to improving recruitment strategies for patients from diverse and historically underrepresented groups.

Observations

Despite federal policies from the US Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health aimed at improving trial representation, gaps in trial enrollment proportionate to the racial and ethnic composition of the HF population have persisted. Increasing trial globalization with limited US enrollment is a major driver of these patterns. Additional barriers to representative enrollment include inequities in care access, logistical issues in participation, restrictive enrollment criteria, and English language requirements.

Conclusions and Relevance

Strategies for improving diverse trial enrollment include methodical study design and site selection, diversification of research leadership and staff, broadening of eligibility criteria, community and patient engagement, and broad stakeholder commitment. In contemporary HF trials, diverse trial enrollment is not only feasible but can be efficiently achieved to improve the generalizability and translation of trial knowledge to clinical practice.