THURSDAY, June 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine each issued a retraction today on studies that evaluated COVID-19 data provided from the same private company.
Both journals recently issued expressions of concern regarding the data, which were provided by Chicago-based company Surgisphere. Mandeep R. Mehra, M.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital and lead author of both studies, and colleagues wrote in The Lancet that their reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review after Surgisphere failed to transfer the full dataset, client contracts, and full ISO audit report to their servers for analysis.
"Based on this development, we can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources," the authors write.
In a statement, The Lancet called for institutional reviews of Surgisphere's research collaborations. In a May 29 statement on Surgisphere's website, the company says it stands "behind the integrity of our studies and our scientific researchers, clinical partners, and data analysis." The article in The Lancet was originally published on May 22 and is titled, "Hydroxychloroquine or Chloroquine With or Without a Macrolide for Treatment of COVID-19: A Multinational Registry Analysis." The article retracted from the New England Journal of Medicine, originally published on May 1, is titled, "Cardiovascular Disease, Drug Therapy, and Mortality in Covid-19."
The Lancet Retraction
New England Journal of Medicine Retraction
