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  • OUTLOOK

Why children have to wait years for new drugs

A shortage of participants means that paediatric trials take longer and there is less financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies.
  1. Dalmeet Singh Chawla

    1. Dalmeet Singh Chawla is a freelance science journalist based in London.

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All four of Danny Benjamin’s sons, aged 14 to 20, took part in clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines. Two of them were among the first children in the United States to be vaccinated. “They’re super pumped about having done that,” says Benjamin, a paediatrician at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “They’ve posted it on their Instagram accounts.”

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Nature 612, S54-S55 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04346-4

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Children‘s health, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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