NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women

https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-cancels-its-first-and-largest-study-centered-women

No paywall link
https://archive.li/hjm4B

President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be killing much, if not all, of a historic initiative that was the first, and is still the largest, National Institutes of Health (NIH) effort centered on the health needs of women. The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) has enrolled tens of thousands of participants in clinical trials of hormones and other medications and tracked the health of many thousands more over more than 3 decades. Its findings have had a major influence on health care.

WHI leaders announced yesterday that contracts supporting its regional centers are being terminated in September and that the study’s clinical coordinating center, based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, “will continue operations until January 2026, after which time its funding remains uncertain.” They added that the contract terminations for its four main sites “will significantly impact ongoing research and data collection … severely limit[ing] WHI’s ability to generate new insights into the health of older women, one of the fastest-growing segments of our population.” (There are about 55 million postmenopausal women in the United States.)

Scientists familiar with the initiative, whose annual funding is currently just under $10 million, are already lamenting its loss, which may foreshadow billions in further contract research funding cuts by NIH. “This trial just taught us an immense amount about prevention of disease in women,” says Sarah Temkin, a gynecological oncologist who until 11 April was associate director for clinical research in the Office of Research on Women’s Health at NIH. “This is a terrible, terrible thing to have happen.”

“All of the [regional contracts] were terminated on an unprecedented timeline that may set a record for abruptness since I can already see the termination in [NIH] Reporter,” epidemiologist Eric Whitsel of at the University of North Carolina, who has been a principal investigator on the study for 22 years, wrote in an email referencing the agency’s grants database. “It’s a sad day indeed for women’s health research because there is much more to learn from these remarkable women about predicting cognitive decline and healthy aging, as well as managing chronic disease in the oldest old. Moreover, there are many earlier career scientists in the U.S. who depend on the WHI platform and resource to train, then launch and advance their careers in medicine and public health, as I once did.”

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