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covid-19_pandemic:research_retractions [2021/12/23 05:57]
pri [SARS COV-2 Virus Characteristics Retractions]
covid-19_pandemic:research_retractions [2022/01/11 21:12] (current)
robin [Early Treatment Medicine Retractions]
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 On June 5, 2020, the paper was retracted by Lancet and the authors, as was another published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found that the use of ACE-2 inhibitors did not increase risk of COVID hospital-deaths.  The WHO reinstated the Solidarity HCQ trial following the retraction, and then officially halted it on June 19, 2020. On June 5, 2020, the paper was retracted by Lancet and the authors, as was another published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found that the use of ACE-2 inhibitors did not increase risk of COVID hospital-deaths.  The WHO reinstated the Solidarity HCQ trial following the retraction, and then officially halted it on June 19, 2020.
  
 +After the Lancet paper was retracted, on June 18, 2020 another paper was published in the New England Journal of Medicine by three of the same authors of the Lancet study and two others (Mandeep R. Mehra, M.D., Sapan S. Desai, M.D., Ph.D., SreyRam Kuy, M.D., M.H.S., Timothy D. Henry, M.D., and Amit N. Patel, M.D.). The study, [[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007621?query=recirc_curatedRelated_article|Cardiovascular Disease, Drug Therapy, and Mortality in Covid-19]], relied on the data from the Surgisphere data set.  The conclusions of this study countered previous findings of a potential harmful association of ACE inhibitors or ARBs with in-hospital CoVid-19 deaths. 
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 +This second study using Surgisphere data was [[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2021225|retracted]] by the authors on June 25, 2020, just one week following its publication.  The retraction reads:  "Because all the authors were not granted access to the raw data and the raw data could not be made available to a third-party auditor, we are unable to validate the primary data sources underlying our article, “Cardiovascular Disease, Drug Therapy, and Mortality in Covid-19.”1 We therefore request that the article be retracted. We apologize to the editors and to readers of the Journal for the difficulties that this has caused."
  
  
  
 ===== SARS COV-2 Origin Retractions ===== ===== SARS COV-2 Origin Retractions =====
-pre-print withdrawn (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1)+On Jan 30, 2020, a controversial pre-print was released on BioRxiv by a team of researchers from New Delhi, India (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1). The researchers compared the genetic sequence of SARS COV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, to SARS-CoV, which had caused the SARS pandemic of 2003. They found 4 insertions in the SARS COV-2 viral genome that was not present in any other coronavirus. Instead, further analysis suggested that three of the translated inserts shared similarity with HIV gp120, a glycoprotein on the surface of HIV that attaches to the target cell plasma membrane, while the fourth mapped to HIV-Gag protein, which is the main structural protein of HIV-1 and all other retroviruses (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3251841/).   
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 +Over many days of its release, the article amassed much criticism from all angles and was widely panned for what critics said were shortcomings in their technical approach and interpretation of results. The preprint amassed several hundred comments. Soon thereafter, the authors withdrew the preprint, writing that they "intend to revise it in response to comments received from the research community on their technical approach and their interpretation of the results".  
  
 ===== Vaccine Research Retractions ===== ===== Vaccine Research Retractions =====
 +In December 2020, the University of Queensland in Australia decided to withdraw further trials on Australia's much touted vaccine candidate, UQ Covid-19 vaccine, a protein subunit vaccine, due to the generation of HIV antibodies in trial participants that resulted in weak HIV-+ results (https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2020/12/update-uq-covid-19-vaccine).
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 +The UQ vaccine used a registered trademark 'molecular clamp technology'. The clamp is used to keep the spike protein in its 'pre-fusion' form, which is the version of the protein to which the most effective antibodies have been known to be generated. The UQ clamp consists of a fusion subunit of HIV gp41 protein, a transmembrane HIV-1 protein (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/gp41). To produce the clamp, they took the spike protein sequence and generated versions of the protein that would be most stable with the clamp (https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-020-00504-2?source=globalbiodefense). 
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 +Due to the weak HIV-+ results, the trials were withdrawn. 
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 ===== Controversial Papers Not Retracted ===== ===== Controversial Papers Not Retracted =====
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