Among the critiques of a new article is a figure (left) duplicated from a retracted paper (right).
A second paper on a contested pain disease is under investigation after sleuths raised questions about the methodology and possible fabrication of data.
Last year, Scientific Reports retracted a paper comparing the condition, which the authors dubbed Middle East Pain Syndrome, to rheumatoid arthritis for failing to establish a clear distinction between the two ailments.
The new article, published in January in BMC Rheumatology with two overlapping authors, compares MEPS to fibromyalgia, claiming it is distinct for its “hand tufts spur-like excrescences.”
A sleuth raised concerns about the new paper to BMC Rheumatology in a February 8 email. In the email, the sleuth, who asked us not to identify them due to “security issues,” critiqued the cross-sectional design and the study’s lack of a control group, and said bone spurs can occur in other diseases, like hyperparathyroidism and osteoarthritis.
Barbara Kensen, associate editor of BMC Rheumatology, told us in an email the journal is “aware of concerns regarding this paper and are investigating them thoroughly.”
Among the issues raised, the sleuth noted the researchers had reused the ethical approval number provided by the affiliated university, Al-Azhar Faculty of Medicine for Girls Ethics Committee at the Egyptian Ministry of Health, from the retracted study. These concerns were also shared on PubPeer by commenter Actinopolyspora biskrensis in March.
Actinopolyspora also noted Reference 3 in the BMC article was a self-citation of a “20 year-old abstract from a poster presentation” claiming exposure to cadmium and lead from fried snacks, fizzy drinks and smoking could contribute to MEPS. However, in the BMC paper, the reference is included for “cadmium polluted underground water.”
The BMC paper includes a figure from the retracted paper, which was published in 2021. As Actinopolyspora noted, because the study was conducted in 2023 and 2024, “the images in this paper cannot be from patients included in this study.”
Adel Elbeialy, a rheumatologist at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and the corresponding author of both the retracted Scientific Reports and BMC articles, responded to the criticism in the same thread on PubPeer. He noted the poster abstract reference was incorrect.
He also said the researchers “forgot to include the ID number” for the ethics approval, but that the number referenced by the comments “is not study-specific but rather serves as the institutional IRB registration code assigned to our faculty.” He also included a picture of the ethics paperwork.
Elbeialy justified the re-use of the image, saying the cohort in the BMC study is the same group of patients “analyzed across multiple research projects.” He also defended referencing the retracted paper: “our study does not rely on it for the specific claim in question,” he wrote on PubPeer. However, he offered to remove the reference as part of a “Correction plan.”
Elbeialy told us by email he hadn’t yet heard from the journal regarding the investigation.
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