Remember Spirocor, the Israeli company that closed down a clinical trial involving its “respiratory stress” test for coronary artery disease because the data underpinning the validity of the method proved unreliable? The problem led to the retraction of two articles, about which we’ve previously reported. But we also found a study by some of the same researchers, who include scientists in Israel and the United States, that had been presented at the 2010 meeting of the American Heart Association and published in the journal Circulation.
That abstract, No. 14426 “Accuracy and Usefulness of Finger Pulse Wave Analysis during Brief Deep Breathing Exercise (Respiratory Stress Response) as a Marker of Significant Coronary Artery Disease,” has now been retracted — making, to our knowledge, the entire body of published research on the Spirocor product an editorial memory.
Here’s the notice, which appears within the text of the abstract:
Retraction, March 2011—For the 2010 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions abstract (14426) by Arthur Shiyovich, Amos Katz, Steven J Sushinsky, Yosi Blaer, Petros Okubagzi, Jamal Jafari, and Ron Waksman (Accuracy and usefulness of finger pulse wave analysis during brief deep breathing exercise [respiratory stress response] as a marker of significant coronary artery disease. Circulation. 2010;122:A14426), the authors have notified the editors that results reported in this article are significantly biased and not reliable and therefore retract the abstract.
We’re still not sure what all this is about. In any case, something tells us we haven’t heard the last about Spirocor and the demise of its test.