Department of Health and Human Services October 24, 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) is announcing the availability of a draft guidance for the research community entitled ``Guidance on Disclosing Reasonably Foreseeable Risks in Research Evaluating Standards of Care.'' OHRP is specifically addressing what risks to subjects are presented by research evaluating or comparing risks associated with standards of care, and which of these risks are reasonably foreseeable and should be disclosed to prospective research subjects as part of their informed consent. OHRP is soliciting written comments from all interested parties, including, but not limited to IRB members, IRB staff, institutional officials, research institutions, investigators, research subject advocacy groups, ethicists, the regulated community, and the public at large. This draft guidance represents OHRP's current thinking on this topic. Certain treatments and procedures that are commonly used in health care for a given type of disease or condition have come to be known as ``standards of care.'' Multiple ``standards of care'' involving widely differing treatments and risks may be available for the same disease or medical condition. Where multiple ``standard of care'' options are available for a given disease or condition, the use of the term does not imply that the options will produce similar benefits or incur similar risks. Furthermore, patients may not find those options equally acceptable, nor do physicians always use them interchangeably. Importantly there is not necessarily a limit on how different the risks from two versions of a standard of care might be. For example, it may already be known that one of those versions imposes a significantly higher risk of death than the other. Adequate knowledge about the effectiveness and risks of standards of care and how these standards compare to each other is sometimes lacking. In recent years research studies designed to evaluate such treatments and procedures have become commonplace. These studies are often called ``comparative effectiveness research'' or ``standard of care research.'' As this type of research has become more common, so too have questions about how the HHS human subject protection regulations (45 CFR part 46) apply to such research. There is uncertainty in the research community about which risks of the research should be determined to be reasonably foreseeable risks of research and how they should be described to prospective subjects in the process of informed consent. OHRP's interpretation of the HHS research regulations has been that if people are being asked to undergo procedures in a research study that involve risks that they would not otherwise be exposed to, these are `research risks' that people must be informed about. Only in that way are they able to make a truly informed decision about whether they are willing to participate. For comparative effectiveness or standard of care research, OHRP's general position is that the reasonably foreseeable risks of research include already-identified risks of the standards of care being evaluated as a purpose of the research when the risks being evaluated are different from the risks subjects would be exposed to outside of the study. This guidance addresses these issues in the form of frequently asked questions. OHRP will consider comments received before issuing the final guidance document.