A journal is retracting a paper that sought to validate genotyping techniques after learning the authors skipped a key step.
The authors scanned blood samples from 500 people who visited “the Blood Bank of our institution,” as they note in the abstract, to validate the use of genotyping techniques in the Saudi population. But the authors didn’t obtain the proper clearance from their institution, King Faisal Specialist Hospital, to publish the work.
Here’s the retraction notice for “Genotyping of CYP2C19 polymorphisms and its clinical validation in the ethnic Arab population:”
The above article from the Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, published online on 14 February 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), and in Volume 67, pp. 972-979, has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor-in-Chief, Professor David Jones, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The retraction has been agreed following an investigation by the Research Advisory Council at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, because the manuscript (including all of its content and authorship) was published without obtaining clearance from the Office of Research Affairs.
The paper has not been cited, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science.
From the paper’s conclusion:
In summary, our study established the prevalence of CYP2C19 variants in the Saudi Arab population by three independent procedures. This identification of the allele distribution pattern for the gene presents a useful provision in the optimization of pharmacological drug therapy choices in the Saudi population. We also showed that the results of the Affymetrix Axiom Genome-Wide ASI Array and DMET Plus chip were comparable, and the xTag assay was similarly predictive of the prevalence of some of the various risk variants that are employed for clinical purposes. Hence, our findings calls for further investigation into the potential use of the Luminex xTag system as molecular diagnostic tool for genotyping the CYP2C19 variants.
We’ve reached out to first author Hamsa T. Tayeb and last author Nduna Dzimiri, as well as to the journal’s editor, David Jones.
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