A research paper from Shengjing Hospital Affiliated to China Medical University was withdrawn due to suspected plagiarism and forged authorship.

On July 7, a retraction statement published online by the international academic journal "Medicine" showed that a research paper by Shengjing Hospital Affiliated to China Medical University in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province was plagiarized from experiments registered in the PROSPERO database. Guide records, forged authorship, and forged publishing license agreements were withdrawn.

PROSPERO is an international database of registries of prospective systematic reviews funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIHR).

The corresponding author of the paper involved is Li Sijia (Li Sijia), whose signing unit is the interventional ward of Shengjing Hospital Affiliated to China Medical University.

On July 13, the staff of the Propaganda Department of Shengjing Hospital Affiliated to China Medical University told The Paper that they have not received relevant investigation conclusions for the time being.

Previously, relevant staff said that the hospital did have an employee named Li Sijia, and relevant departments have followed up on the incident.

The paper involved was submitted on October 15, 2022, accepted by the journal Medicine two days later, and published online on November 25, 2022. The title of the paper is "Opioids for treating refractory dyspnea in patients with heart failure: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis".

Dyspnea is a hallmark symptom of heart failure, the paper said. Existing clinical studies have shown that opioids can effectively improve the clinical symptoms of dyspnea in patients with heart failure. However, no relevant systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been done so far. The researchers searched 3 foreign electronic databases (Cochrane Library, Embase, Pubmed) and 4 domestic electronic databases (CNKI, Wanfang Database, China Biomedical Literature Database, and China Science and Technology Journal Database) to collect data up to October 2022. months of potential research. This study will assess whether opioids are effective and safe for treating refractory dyspnea in patients with heart failure. This meta-analysis will provide comprehensive evidence on opioid therapy for dyspnea in heart failure patients.

However, half a year after its publication, the paper was withdrawn due to issues such as plagiarism and forged authorship.

On July 15, 2021, the PROSPERO database released the registration information entitled "Opioid therapy for refractory dyspnea in patients with heart failure: a systematic review and meta-analysis protocol".

The PROSPERO database mentioned in the retraction statement shows that, more than a year before the submission of the paper involved, on July 15, 2021, the PROSPERO database published a paper with the same name as the paper involved-"Opioid Drugs Treat Heart Failure Patients Refractory Dyspnea: A Protocol for a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis" registration information: Submitted by staff from the Center for Palliative Care in Basel, Switzerland, University of Cologne, Germany, etc., with an initial submission date of 8 June 2021.

The official website of the academic journal Medicine (Medicine) states that the journal is a fully open-access publication that publishes original research results in various disciplines and subspecialties of medicine.

According to the official website of Shengjing Hospital Affiliated to China Medical University, the hospital is the first comprehensive hospital in China to have a well-known Chinese trademark; the hospital is a large-scale comprehensive modern digital university affiliated hospital, with three major medical hospitals of Nanhu, Huaxiang and Shenbei districts, both located in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province.

According to the official website of the hospital, there are three interventional wards in the radiology department of the hospital. "The Radiology Department of Shengjing Hospital Affiliated to China Medical University is the location of the Medical Imaging Department of China Medical University and the Liaoning Provincial Medical Image Quality Control Center." The Department of Radiology has various modern large-scale equipment such as interventional radio frequency therapy equipment.

Attached paper link:

https://journals.lww.com/md-journal/Citation/2022/11250/Opioids_for_treating_refractory_dyspnea_in.30.aspx

Withdrawal statement:

https://journals.lww.com/md-journal/Fulltext/2023/07070/Opioids_for_treating_refractory_dyspnea_in.54.aspx