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Patient skepticism concerning medical innovations can have major consequences for current public health and may threaten future progress, which greatly relies on clinical research. The primary objective of this study is to determine the variables associated with patient acceptation or refusal to participate in clinical research. Specifically, we sought to evaluate if distrust in pharmaceutical companies and associated psychosocial factors could represent a recruitment bias in clinical trials and thus threaten the applicability of their results.
This prospective, multicenter survey consisted in the administration of a self-questionnaire to patients during a pulmonology consultation. The questionnaires distributed collected demographics, socio-professional and basic health literacy characteristics. Patients were asked to rank their level of trust for pharmaceutical companies and indicate their willingness to participate in different categories of research pre or post marketing, sponsored by an academic institution or pharmaceutical company.
One thousand patients completed the survey, corresponding to a response rate of Data from patients were analyzed in this study. Distrust-group membership is associated with unwillingness to participate in certain categories of trials such as pre-marketing and industry-sponsored trials. Distrust in pharmaceutical companies is associated with a specific patient profile and with refusal to participate in certain subcategories of trials.
This potential recruitment bias may explain the under-representation of certain categories of patients such as women in pre-marketing drug trials. Public distrust in healthcare systems and directed towards physicians, regulatory authorities and the pharmaceutical industry in general has increased over the past decades [ 1 , 2 ]. The influence on medical decision-making among both physicians and patients is difficult to assess [ 4 β 7 ].
