Three retractions for geriatric medicine researcher

A trio of papers on health issues in elderly patients, all sharing an author, have been retracted from Geriatrics & Gerontology International. 

The reasons for the retractions range from expired kits, an “unattributed overlap” with another paper, “authorship issues,” and issues over sample sizes.

Tomader Taha Abdel Rahman, a researcher at Ain Shams University in Cairo, is the first author on two of the papers, and second author on the third.

Here’s the retraction note for a paper that showed elderly adults with chronic hepatitis C are at risk of having cognitive issues:

The following article from Geriatrics & Gerontology International, ‘Executive functions in chronic hepatitis C virus infected elderly patients’ by Tomader T. Abdel Rahman, Rania M. Abou Hashem, Marwa A.A. Abdel Guaad and Ahmad K. Mortagy published online on 25 March 2014 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor- in-Chief, Professor Akihisa Iguchi, and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd. The retraction has been agreed as the kits used in the study had passed their expiration date, and thus affected the results reported. Significant unattributed overlap has also been identified with Advances in Aging Research, volume 3, pp. 285–292.

The “significant unattributed overlap” is with “Dysexecutive Performance of Elderly Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infection,” published in 2014, also with Rahman as a first author.

Here’s the retraction note for a paper that showed elderly patients with diabetes are also at risk of cognitive issues:

The following article from Geriatrics & Gerontology International, ‘Executive dysfunction in elderly diabetic patients’ by Tomader Taha Abdel Rahman, Manal Mohsen Mohammed and Abeer atea Saad Aldeen published online on 21 April 2014 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor- in-Chief, Professor Akihisa Iguchi, and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to authorship issues.

And here’s the note for a paper that found less than 10 percent of elderly patients who need CPR in the hospital in Egypt survive to discharge:

The following article from Geriatrics & Gerontology International, ‘Cardiopulmonary resuscitation: Outcome and its predictors among hospitalized elderly patients in Egypt’ by Amer M. S., Abdel Rahman T. T., Aly, W. W. and Ahmad N. G. published online on 10 June 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Professor Akihisa Iguchi, and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to concerns raised in relation to the sample size reported in the article, and its impact on the study’s outcomes.

The paper has been cited twice, including once by the retraction note, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Rahman also published an extensive erratum in Advances in Aging Research in 2014 for “Prevalence of Sarcopenia among Nursing Home Older Residents in Cairo, Egypt,” after removing data from a defective handheld dynamometer and participants who didn’t complete assessments.

We’ve reached out to Rahman, and the journal. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

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