BMJ 2000;321:992-993 ( 21 October )

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Unjustified exclusion of elderly people from studies submitted to research ethics committee for approval: descriptive study

Antony Bayer, director, Cardiff Memory Team, Win Tadd, research fellow. 

University Department of Geriatric Medicine, University of Wales College of Medicine, Llandough Hospital, Penarth CF64 2XX

Correspondence to: A Bayer bayer@cf.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Ageism in clinical practice¹ and published research² is well recognised. We were interested in whether research protocols submitted to the local research ethics committee contained unjustified upper age limits and how the committee dealt with this.

	Methods and results

We reviewed all studies submitted to Bro Taf local research ethics committee in the first seven months of 1999 to determine whether any upper age limits were justified and whether the committee had commented on such age restrictions. We then made a judgment on the appropriateness of the upper age limit.

Of 225 studies whose protocols were reviewed, 65 were on topics or conditions that automatically excluded elderly people. Five studies specifically concerned elderly people and had a lower age limit but no upper limit. Of the remaining 155, 90 (58%) had an upper age limit, which ranged from 45 years (in a smoking cessation intervention) to 100 years (in a study of an open access mental health service), with a . . . [Full text of this article]

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