A controversial research that promoted hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, as a remedy for Covid-19 has formally been withdrawn.
On Tuesday, Elsevier, a Dutch educational publishing firm which owns the Worldwide Journal of Antimicrobial Brokers, issued the retraction of the March 2020 research, saying “issues have been raised relating to this text, the substance of which relate to the articles’ adherence to Elsevier’s publishing ethics insurance policies and the suitable conduct of analysis involving human individuals”.
Elsevier added that issues had additionally been raised by “three of the authors themselves relating to the article’s methodology and conclusions”.
An investigation by Elsevier’s analysis integrity and publishing ethics crew, in addition to the journal’s co-owner, the Worldwide Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, discovered a number of points inside the research, in accordance with a prolonged retraction discover.
Amongst these embrace the journal being unable to substantiate whether or not any of the sufferers concerned within the research had been acquired earlier than moral approval had been obtained. The journal has additionally not been capable of set up whether or not there was equipoise between the research sufferers and the management sufferers. Based on the Affiliation of Healthcare Journalists, equipoise is the “real uncertainty inside the professional medical group – not essentially on the a part of the person investigator – about the popular remedy.”
The retraction discover additionally stated that the journal has not been capable of set up whether or not the themes on this research ought to have supplied knowledgeable consent to obtain azithromycin as a part of the research. Based on the unique research, the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine to deal with Covid would improve if used with azithromycin, an antibiotic. It went on so as to add that there’s “cheap trigger to conclude that azithromycin was not thought-about commonplace care on the time of the research”.
Because the research’s publication, three of its authors, Johan Courjon, Valérie Giordanengo and Stéphane Honoré, have contacted the journal to specific their issues “relating to the presentation and interpretation of outcomes” and acknowledged that they “not want to see their names related to the article”. In the meantime, a number of different authors disagree with the retraction and dispute the grounds for it, the retraction discover stated.
Based on Nature, the research is the highest-cited paper on Covid-19 to be retracted, in addition to the second-most-cited retracted paper general.
In March 2020, the US Meals and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization that allowed for the stockpiling of hydroxychloroquine, in addition to its distribution and use for sure hospitalized sufferers with Covid-19.
Then US president Donald Trump additionally touted hydroxychloroquine as a miracle drug for Covid-19, at one level claiming that he was taking the drug prophylactically. Earlier this 12 months, a research printed within the peer-reviewed Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy journal discovered that individuals who took hydroxychloroquine had been 11% extra prone to die from Covid.
Following the research’s retraction, the French Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics issued an announcement, saying that the research “constitutes a transparent instance of scientific misconduct, marked by information manipulation and bias within the interpretation of outcomes, aimed toward falsely presenting hydroxychloroquine as efficient”.
“This extremely controversial research was the cornerstone of a world scandal. The promotion of its outcomes led to the overprescription of hydroxychloroquine to tens of millions of sufferers, leading to pointless risk-taking for tens of millions of individuals and probably 1000’s of avoidable deaths … One of many elementary ideas of medication – primum non nocere (‘first, do no hurt’) – has been sacrificed right here, with dramatic penalties,” it added.
