Timalsina S, Gyawali P, Bhattarai A. Int J Womens Health. 2016;8:627-631.
The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of International Journal of Women’s Health wish to retract the published article.
The journal was notified of similarities reported between the published article and material published as an abstract in Clinical Chemistry, as part of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry’s annual meeting in 2011 (https://meeting.aacc.org/-/media/Files/Meetings-and-Events/Annual%20Meeting/2011/AACC_11_FullAbstract.pdf?la=en&hash=A762BB9A047239D3DB858A1DE4D0C21C4C378A7E).
It was observed both articles appeared to be reporting the same study, with the same number of participants and identical results. However, the International Journal of Women’s Health article reported results for oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) whereas the abstract published in Clinical Chemistry reported results for anti-oxidized low-density lipoprotein (anti-OxLDL) antibody. The author explained that, in fact, the data collected for the study was for anti-OxLDL antibody and this had been misrepresented as oxLDL in the published study.
The Editor concluded that oxLDL and anti-OXLDL antibody represent two separate assays which have different biological significance and cannot be used interchangeably. The Editor determined the findings of the study were no longer valid and requested for the article to be retracted.
The authors wish to apologise for this error.
Our decision-making was informed by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retraction.
The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.