The Lancet on Thursday retracted a study that raised safety fears over the use of a drug favoured by President Donald Trump to treat COVID-19, after the paper’s authors said they could no longer vouch for its underlying data.
It was soon followed by the withdrawal of another coronavirus paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that was not linked to hydroxychloroquine but relied upon the same healthcare company’s patient database.
The unfolding research scandal threatens to undermine confidence in two of the world’s top medical journals in the midst of a pandemic.
But it is the retraction of The Lancet study that may supercharge what has become a highly politicised debate about hydroxychloroquine, an old malaria and rheumatoid arthritis drug now backed by many U.S. conservatives against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
In their paper published on May 22, the authors claimed to have retrospectively analysed some 96,000 patient records, finding that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, a related compound, were ineffective against COVID-19 and even increased the risk of death.
Heart arrhythmia was flagged as a particular concern.
This finding led the World Health Organisation to temporarily suspend clinical trials into the medicines, though the paper soon triggered widespread concern among scientists over a lack of information about the countries and hospitals that contri