A controversial study that recommended the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the new coronavirus has been officially retracted.
On Tuesday, Dutch academic publisher Elsevier, which owns the International Journal of Antimicrobials, announced a retraction of the March 2020 study, stating that “concerns have been raised regarding this paper, including that the article conforms to the Elsevier paper.” It’s relevant to what you’re doing.” Publication of ethical policies and proper conduct of research involving human participants. ”
Elsevier added that “concerns were also raised by three of the authors themselves regarding the paper’s methodology and conclusions.”
An investigation by Elsevier’s research integrity and publication ethics team and the journal’s co-owner, the International Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, found multiple problems within the study. According to Long withdrawal notice.
These include the journal’s failure to confirm whether any of the patients involved in the study were obtained before ethical approval was obtained. The journal also could not establish whether there was a balance between study and control patients. According to The Association of Medical Journalists says the equation is “genuine uncertainty within the professional medical community, not necessarily on the part of individual researchers, about the preferred treatment.”
The retraction notice also states that the journal has not been able to establish whether the study subjects should have provided informed consent to receive azithromycin as part of the study. Hydroxychloroquine increases its effectiveness in treating coronavirus infections when used in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin, according to an original study. It added: “There are reasonable grounds to conclude that azithromycin was not considered standard treatment at the time of the study.”
Since the publication of the study, three of the authors, Johan Curjon, Valérie Giordanengo, and Stéphane Honoré, have contacted the journal to express their concerns “regarding the presentation and interpretation of the results” and to “regard the presentation and interpretation of the results.” “I no longer want that to be associated with research.” article”. However, several other authors disagree with the retraction and dispute its basis, the retraction notice states.
According to According to Nature, the study is the most cited and retracted paper related to the coronavirus, and the second most cited retracted paper overall.
In March 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued Emergency use authorization to stockpile hydroxychloroquine and allow its distribution and use to some hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump also touted hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19, and at one point claimed he was taking the drug preventively. A study published earlier this year in the peer-reviewed journal Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy found that people who took hydroxychloroquine were 11% more likely to die from the coronavirus.
Following the retraction of the study, the French Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics issued The statement said the study was “a clear example of scientific misconduct characterized by data manipulation and bias in the interpretation of results aimed at falsely presenting hydroxychloroquine as effective.” It is stated that.
“This highly controversial study became the basis of a global scandal. Publicity of its results led to the overprescription of hydroxychloroquine to millions of patients, resulting in hundreds of Millions of people took unnecessary risks, and thousands of people suffered potentially avoidable deaths…one of the fundamental principles of medicine – Primum non nocere (‘First, do no harm’) sacrificed here, with dramatic consequences,” he added.
