The Breast Cancer Clinical Trial Disparities in Africa: Limited Evidence for a High-Burden Population
Limited Evidence for a High-Burden Population
Keywords:
breast cancerAbstract
Introduction
Breast cancer outcomes in Africa remain poor despite increasing incidence and younger age at presentation among affected women. We investigated whether breast cancer clinical trial activity in Africa reflects the region’s disease burden.
Methods
Using ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 through April 7, 2026, we performed a cross-sectional audit of registered interventional breast cancer trials in Africa and the United States.
Registry data were analyzed to compare trial representation and research investment across regions.
Results
Africa contributed only 128 breast cancer trials among 23,873 registered interventional studies, compared with 5,740 of 190,644 in the United States.
Although trial registrations increased substantially over time, most African countries, including Uganda which remain minimally represented in breast cancer research.
Conclusion
The resulting evidence gap may compromise development of contextually relevant treatment strategies for African women with aggressive breast cancer subtypes.
References
Jedy-Agba, E., McCormack, V., Adebamowo, C., & dos-Santos-Silva, I. (2016). Stage at diagnosis of breast cancer in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Global Health, 4(12), e923-e935.
Ward, Z. J., & Goldie, S. J. (2024). Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 estimates: implications for health policy and research. The Lancet, 403(10440), 1958-1959.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Janepher Nabaasa, Nabaasa Janepher, Eyong Peter
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles in Synthesis are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Authors retain copyright.
