Industry-sponsored cancer trials are more likely to have consent documents translated to languages other than English, according to research published in Nature.
Researchers found that the odds of having translated consent documents were more than 3 times higher for industry-sponsored trials than for trials not sponsored by industry.
The researchers evaluated 12,082 consent events at the University of California Los Angeles Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Most events (n=11,340) were for patients with English as their primary language. The most common primary languages other than English were Spanish (n=231) and Chinese (n=118).
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There were 758 trials for which patients signed a consent document, and 34.4% of those trials had institutional review board-approved translated consent documents.
The proportion of consent events that had translated consent documents was higher for industry-sponsored trials than for trials not sponsored by industry — 51.4% and 23.9%, respectively (P <.001).
The odds of a consent event having any translated consent documents were higher for industry-sponsored trials than for trials not sponsored by industry (odds ratio [OR], 3.4; 95% CI, 3.1-3.6; P <.001).
Patients whose primary language was not English represented 8.1% of consent events in industry-sponsored trials and 4.4% of consent events in trials not sponsored by industry (P <.001). Patients with limited English proficiency represented 5.5% of consent events in industry-sponsored trials and 2.8% of consent events in trials not sponsored by industry (P <.001).
The odds of a patient signing consent documents in their primary language for a non-industry-sponsored trial were lower for patients with a primary language other than English (OR, 0.38, 95% CI, 0.28-0.52; P <.001) and limited English proficiency (OR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.25-0.50; P <.001) than for patients whose primary language was English.
“Our findings suggest that an important barrier for patients with limited English proficiency to participate in cancer studies may be the cost that consent document translation presents to investigators, particularly in studies not sponsored by industry,” the researchers wrote. “This work identifies a potentially modifiable barrier to enrolling these patients on studies, which is of particular importance in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual population.”
Disclosures: Some study authors declared affiliations with biotech, pharmaceutical, and/or device companies. Please see the original reference for a full list of disclosures.
Reference
Velez MA, Glenn BA, Garcia-Jimenez M, et al. Consent document translation expense hinders inclusive clinical trial enrolment. Nature. Published online August 2, 2023. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06382-0
This article originally appeared on Cancer Therapy Advisor
