NEW DELHI: The Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, has retracted a major study that had claimed that experimental treatment of COVID-19 patients with malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine may be worsening the disease outcome in many.
Based on the study published in the journal on May 22, the World Health Organisation had suspended the HCQ arm of its global Solidarity Trial that it is conducting in over 100 countries to see if five repurposed drugs or drug combinations can help cure novel coronavirus infection.
However, a few days back it emerged that the study “Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis” may have been flawed as concerns were raised on the veracity of the data, on which it was based.
It was revealed that the primary data used in the scientific paper was provided by a company called Surgisphere, which though claims to have one of the largest and fastest hospital databases in the world but had no scientific expertise in data collection.
The dataset provided by the company had also been used in another paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
As it emerged that these papers would have been faulty, the WHO had resumed the HCQ arm of the Solidarity Trial earlier this week.
In a statement issued on Thursday night, The Lancet meanwhile said that three of the authors of the paper have have retracted their study.
“They were unable to complete an independent audit of the data underpinning their analysis. As a result, they have concluded that they can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources,” the journal said.
It added that the journal takes issues of scientific integrity extremely seriously, and there are many outstanding questions about Surgisphere and the data that were allegedly included in this study.
A statement by the three of the paper’s author associated with three US institutions including Harvard Medical School, shared by The Lancet said that after the publication of the Lancet article, several concerns were raised with respect to the veracity of the data and analyses conducted by Surgisphere Corporation and its founder and the co-author, Sapan Desai.
“We launched an independent third-party peer review of Surgisphere with the consent of Sapan Desai to evaluate the origination of the database elements, to confirm the completeness of the database, and to replicate the analyses presented in the paper,” said the authors.
They added. “Our independent peer reviewers informed us that Surgisphere would not transfer the full dataset, client contracts, and the full ISO audit report to their servers for analysis as such transfer would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements.”
The reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review and therefore notified of their withdrawal from the peer-review process.
The authors said that they entered this collaboration to contribute in good faith and at a time of great need during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We deeply apologise to you, the editors, and the journal readership for any embarrassment or inconvenience that this may have caused,” said their note.