Tag: Anne Drapkin Lyerly

Background: Since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act of 1993, focus on the equitable inclusion of women in clinical research has been ongoing. NIH’s 2015 sex as a biological variable (SABV) policy aims to transform research design, analysis, and reporting in the preclinical sphere by including male and...

During previous public health emergencies, the issue of whether public health agencies should recommend that women avoid becoming pregnant because of potential risks to themselves and their newborns has been controversial. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has again led to questions regarding whether women should consider postponing pregnancy because of potential...

Background: The pressing need to expand the biomedical HIV prevention evidence base during pregnancy is now increasingly recognized.  Women’s views regarding participation in such trials and initiating PrEP while pregnant are critical to inform evolving policy and best practices aimed at responsibly expanding evidence-based access for this population.  Methods: We...

The scientific and ethical importance of including women of reproductive age in biomedical research is widely acknowledged. Concerns about preventing fetal exposure to research interventions have motivated requirements for contraception among reproductive aged women in biomedical studies–often irrespective of risks and benefits or a woman’s actual potential for pregnancy, raising...

Honoring a person’s wishes at the end of life is widely recognized as profoundly important to humane, ethical care.1 To that end, efforts to help individuals make their preferences about end-of-life care known have involved advance care planning, including the completion of advance directives and identification of a surrogate decision...

As large-scale biobanks are developed for translational genomic research and health care quality improvement, they are also becoming attractive as sites for public health interventions, such as population-based preventive sequencing for actionable variants. With the rapid advance of next-generation sequencing, the feasibility of such population health interventions is also increasing....

Rethinking Bed Rest For Pregnancy “The bottom line is that there’s never been any proven benefit of bed rest,” says Dr. Anne Drapkin Lyerly, an OB-GYN and professor of bioethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lyerly and colleagues in 2013 did a review of the scientific...

As Zika virus infection during pregnancy can cause a range of congenital anomalies, pregnant women may be a target population for vaccination in future outbreaks. Their inclusion in vaccine trials is critical to ensure safe and effective vaccines in pregnancy. Though many vaccine candidates are in development, pregnant women’s willingness...

Clinical research to inform the evidence base to guide nonobstetrical care during pregnancy is critically important for the well-being of women and their future offspring. Conversations about regulations for such research, including whether paternal consent should ever be required, should be informed by the perspectives of those most affected, namely,...

Human infection challenge studies, which deliberately expose healthy volunteers to disease-causing infectious agents under carefully controlled conditions, offer a valuable method of biomedical research aimed at efficient initial efficacy testing of vaccine candidates, among other possible uses. They can be controversial, however, often evoking the response, “How can researchers do...