Industry story
Falls are nearly impossible to measure accurately, stalling drug trials
aging drug-discovery measurement medical-innovation
A drug program aimed at preventing falls in older adults was shelved before a single compound was tested, and the reason tells you something important about the state of aging research. Lloyd Klickstein's team ran a 60-person, six-month study using wearable accelerometer pendants on nursing-home residents who had each fallen at least once in the prior six months; the devices caught only 17% of actual falls confirmed by staff. Self-reported falls are no better: older adults routinely hide them from caregivers and doctors, fearing it will cost them their independence. Until researchers can measure falls reliably, any drug that actually worked could fail a trial simply because the trial couldn't see what it was counting.
Full analysis
Lloyd Klickstein described a decade-old effort to develop a drug that would prevent falls in older adults — and why the program was abandoned before a single drug was tested. His team ran a 60-person, six-month study of triaxial accelerometer pendants on nursing-home residents who had fallen at least once in the prior six months. The device detected only 17% of actual falls (confirmed by staff finding residents on the floor), making it useless as a trial endpoint. A separate attempt using MIT professor Dina Katabi's Wi-Fi-based movement-sensing technology also fell through. Klickstein noted that older adults under-report falls to caregivers and physicians out of fear of being moved out of their homes, compounding the measurement problem. The episode illustrates a broader challenge in aging research: many outcomes that matter most — falls, frailty, functional decline — are difficult to capture objectively, which can prevent otherwise promising drug programs from moving forward.
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