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Patients at the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia will soon have access to emerging therapies and medications through a new research initiative at the health care organization.
The center is launching its first clinical trial later this month, which will be open to current and new patients interested in using new kinds of HIV prevention options.
The clinical trial will enroll trans and non-gender-conforming patients and study the use of one type of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, medication that is taken orally once a month to prevent HIV infections. The trial will continue to enroll patients through early next year, and data will be collected through the end of 2027.
It’s part of the Mazzoni Center’s new research department, which was created to bring innovative health care choices to its LGBTQ+ patient population at a time when federal funding for similar research has sharply declined.
“I think it’s more important now than ever to make sure that our patients are represented in research,” said Dr. Stacey Trooskin, the center’s chief medical officer. “We want to be able to offer cutting-edge therapies to our patients and prevention as well.”
Research on health outcomes in LGBTQ+ populations generally lags behind studies involving other patient populations, said Wil Vickroy, director of clinical research at the Mazzoni Center.
And even when studies are done in this space, Vickroy said the research doesn’t always include or represent everyone in LGBTQ+ populations.
“There are not enough studies that capture sexual orientation and gender identity information, and so there’s just kind of a big question mark around how many people from the community are represented in these bigger clinical trials that have really steered modern care,” he said.
That can make it challenging for health providers to recommend specific treatments, therapies or prevention tools when they’re unsure how certain patients might use them, Trooskin said.
“It’s so important for providers to not have to generalize or extrapolate data where certain patient populations are not represented, where we’re left having to make our best guess,” she said. “The more firm data that we have, the better decisions we can make for our patients.”
