Covid-19: Lancet retracts paper that halted hydroxychloroquine trials
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...s-paper-that-halted-hydroxychloroquine-trials
The Lancet paper that halted global trials of hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 because of fears of increased deaths has been retracted.
The lead author, Prof Mandeep Mehra, from the Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, decided to ask the Lancet for the retraction because he could no longer vouch for the accuracy of the data.
The journal’s editor, Richard Horton, said he was appalled by developments. “This is a shocking example of research misconduct in the middle of a global health emergency,” he told the Guardian.
An independent audit company was asked to examine a database provided for the research by the US company, Surgisphere, to ensure it had the data from more than 96,000 Covid-19 patients in 671 hospitals worldwide, that it was obtained properly and was accurate.
Surgisphere’s CEO, Sapan Desai, had said he would cooperate with the inquiry, but it is understood he refused to give the auditors access to all the data they asked for.
In a statement on Thursday, Mehra said: “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. As such, our reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review and therefore notified us of their withdrawal from the peer-review process.”
The Lancet study had a dramatic impact on attempts to find out whether the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, and its older version, chloroquine, could help treat patients with Covid-19. The US president, Donald Trump was among those who backed the drug before any high-quality trial evidence had been published.
The World Health Organization and several countries suspended randomised controlled trials that were set up to find an answer. Those trials have now been restarted. Many scientists were angry that they had been stopped on the basis of a trial that was observational and not a “gold standard” RCT.
Mehra had commissioned an independent audit of the data after scientists questioned it.
A Guardian investigation revealed errors in the data which were later explained by Surgisphere as some patients being wrongly allocated to Australia instead of Asia. But more anomalies were then picked up. A further Guardian investigation found that there were
serious questions to be askedabout the company itself.
When the Guardian put a detailed list of concerns to Desai about the database, the study findings and his background, he responded: “There continues to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what our system is and how it works.
“There are also a number of inaccuracies and unrelated connections that you are trying to make with a clear bias toward attempting to discredit who we are and what we do,” he said. “We do not agree with your premise or the nature of what you have put together, and I am sad to see that what should have been a scientific discussion has been denigrated into this sort of discussion.”
