NIH cuts impacted 74,000 clinical trial patients: study

• "There's a commitment that patients make to the clinical trials ... Here, you've broken a commitment to those individuals," Anupam Jena, an author of the study and a professor at Harvard Medical School, told Axios.
• The funding cuts raise concerns about avoidable waste, data quality and ethical obligations to patients, the study published published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine says.

Catch up quick: NIH cut some $3.8 billion in grant funding to U.S. institutions earlier this year. Many of those grants were to study diversity, equity and inclusion-related topics.

By the numbers: NIH terminated grants for 383 clinical trials between Feb. 28 and Aug. 15 of this year, out of the 11,008 it funded during that period.

• More than 14% of infectious disease trials had their funding pulled, the highest by far of any focus area. About 6% of respiratory illness trials and 5% of cardiovascular trials were also affected.

What they're saying: "It was a little bit surprising ... that feels like actually a substantive number," Jena said.

• "This is the kind of science we think of as being sort of the highest quality science, in terms of the rigor of the evidence that's generated," Jena said. "We want to see more of that kind of research — and not less of it."

• It's not yet clear whether or how the funding challenges impacted the outcomes of these trials, he added.

The other side: "We strongly reject the intentionally misleading portrayal of our grant management process" in the study, HHS communications director Andrew Nixon said in an email.

• "What they also fail to mention is that these terminations likely happened because this research prioritized ideological agendas over scientific rigor and meaningful outcomes for the American people," Nixon said.
• HHS is refocusing its clinical trial portfolio to fund "high-impact, high-urgency science," he added.