An early and influential paper on long COVID that appeared in The Lancet has been flagged with an expression of concern while the journal investigates “data errors” brought to light by a reader.
An editorial that accompanied the paper when it was published in January of last year described it as “the first large cohort study with 6-months’ follow-up” of people hospitalized with COVID-19. The article has received plenty of attention since then.
Titled “6-month consequences of COVID-19 in patients discharged from hospital: a cohort study,” the paper has been cited nearly 1,600 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. There are references to it in multiple documents from the World Health Organization.
According to the expression of concern, dated November 24, a reader found inconsistencies between the data in the article and a later paper describing the same cohort of patients after a year of follow-up. That discovery sparked an investigation that is still ongoing.
The corresponding author of both papers, Bin Cao of China’s National Center for Respiratory Medicine and the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, has not responded to a request for comment. A profile of Cao published in Lancet Infectious Diseases last March described him as “a leading researcher in pneumonia and influenza” who “has been instrumental in increasing knowledge about COVID-19.”1
Read more here.
References
- Kincaid, E. (2022, December 2). Buzzy Lancet Long COVID Paper Under Investigation for “Data Errors.” Medscape. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/984858?src=wnl_tp10_daily_221204_MSCPEDIT
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