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Exclusion of elderly people from clinical research: a descriptive study of published reports

^a Department of Medicine for the Elderly, Royal Bolton Hospital, Farnworth, Bolton BL4 0JR

Correspondence to: Dr Banerjee

	Introduction

Conclusions reached in studies of young people cannot be extrapolated to elderly people.¹ It is thus essential that elderly people are included in clinical studies. We set out to discover whether and to what extent studies published in medical journals exclude this section of the population.

	Methods and results

We examined all the original research papers in all the issues of the BMJ, Gut, the Lancet, and Thorax between 1 June 1996 and 1 June 1997. We excluded case studies and meta-analyses. We looked for a mention of age limit first in the abstract or the methods section of the papers, but we sometimes found it mentioned in other parts of the papers instead. We then categorised the papers as studies (a) specifically of elderly people (aged 75 years or more); (b) excluding elderly people . . . [Full text of this article]

	Comment

	Acknowledgements

	References

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