Community Chat

[marmot24]

I live in a major city in the northeast. Our university is part of the COVID 19 vaccine program. My oldest son, recently retired and an alumni of said university, volunteered to be a part of the trials.

The interview was going well until they asked if he was color blind. He answered yes and they said ..sorry you're not eligible. He asked why but she said she couldn't say.

Any ideas why being color blind would eliminate you from testing a vaccine?

[FrostyBabe1]

I can't speak to your son's case specifically, but often times drug trials require participants to be in absolutely perfect health - no conditions or illnesses of any kind. Perhaps there's a possibilty of vision changes as a side effect of the particular vaccine, so anyone with any type of vision issue would be ruled out. 

I spent the bulk of my career in pharma, and when ads went out looking for study participants, they almost always specified an acceptable age range as well as numerous other requirements, such as women of childbearing age had  to prove they were using contraception, no hypertension, no diabetes, no high cholesterol, weight in the acceptable range for height, etc. 

[chrystaltree]

I don't know but I suspect it has something to do with a person's genetic profile.  Color blindness results for specific genes.  I far from being knowledgeable on this stuff but I do know that genes and their interactions with each other can affect different body parts and systems.  It doesn't mean he is ineligible for all vaccine trials, just the vaccine that group is investigating. Interestingly, I read not long ago that a new gene therapy to correct severe color blindness is in trials now.

[marmot24]

That makes sense...thanks

[Pearlee]

Color blindness isn't real common so perhaps they wanted all subject to be more representative of the public at large, rather than being "special" in some way. Kind of what @chrystaltree said but expressed differently.

[Sooner]

It doesn't fit the genetic profile of the sample subjects they need.  

[Still Raining]

Perhaps they had a quota which was filled?  I was rejected for registering as a bone marrow donor because they had many white females already.  

[KarenQVC]

I have been eliminated from studies because of being left handed.

[bikerbabe]

Monitoring for side effects would include checking for vision changes - preexisting colorblindness complicates that assessment.

[Mindy D]

---

@marmot24 wrote:

I live in a major city in the northeast. Our university is part of the COVID 19 vaccine program. My oldest son, recently retired and an alumni of said university, volunteered to be a part of the trials.

The interview was going well until they asked if he was color blind. He answered yes and they said ..sorry you're not eligible. He asked why but she said she couldn't say.

Any ideas why being color blind would eliminate you from testing a vaccine?

---

@marmot24 What city and what university? I can check to see the type of vaccine the university is testing and I can see the criteria for eligibility and ineligibility. I'll post the trial details here so that you can read what is written. Just a guess in advance of my checking is that the experimenters might check for visual side effects using tests which can not be properly used if individuals have color blindness. EDITED: Sorry, I forgot to say that some medications and chemicals are known to cause acquired color blindness and the researchers might want to exclude those that are color blind before testing in case color blindness arises as a side effect. Of course, the acquired kinds of color blindness differ from the genetic forms and could later be distinguished but it is easier to not have to determine this during the trials.