Retraction in Medline medical literature experienced a tenfold increase between 1999 and 2009, however retraction remains a rare event since it represents 0.02% of publications. Retractions used to be handled following informal practices until they were formalized in 2009 by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The objective of our study was to describe the compliance to these guidelines.

Background: Bevacizumab—a humanized monoclonal antibody—has been widely used to treat patients with hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), but no randomized trial has yet been conducted.Methods: This study is a double‐blind multicenter randomized phase 2 trial with a 1:1 active‐treatment‐to‐placebo ratio. We included patients over the age of 18 with a confirmed diagnosis and the need for at least four red blood cell (RBC) units transfused in the 3 months before study enrollment. Bevacizumab was administered at a dose of 5 mg/kg every 14 days with a total of six injections. The primary efficacy criterion was a decrease of at least 50% in the cumulative number of RBC units transfused in a 3‐month period before and after treatment.Results: A total of 24 patients (12 in each group) were included and randomized at 4 different centers. In intention‐to‐treat analysis, 63.6% of patients (7/11) in the bevacizumab group versus 33.3% of patients (4/12) in the placebo group decreased the number of blood transfusions by at least 50% (p = 0.22). Hemoglobin levels significantly improved at 6 months in the bevacizumab versus placebo group (p = 0.02). The pharmacokinetics study revealed that patients with high exposure to bevacizumab had a significant decrease in RBC transfusions (p = 0.03). Fifty‐nine adverse events were observed, 34 in the placebo arm versus 25 in the bevacizumab arm.Conclusion: Though the present trial was underpowered, patients with HHT receiving bevacizumab required numerically fewer red blood cell transfusions than those receiving placebo, particularly those with high exposure.

Public funding is aimed at facilitating the initiation, completion and publication of research study protocols. However, no evaluation is made to investigate the impact of grant success on the conduct of biomedical research. It is therefore of great interest to compare the fate of funded protocols versus not funded: Are they initiated? Are they completed? Did the results confirm the hypothesis? Were they published? The objective was to investigate the fate of protocols submitted for funding, whether they were funded or not. Retrospective cohort study of protocols submitted for funding to the Greater Lyon regional scientific committee in 1997. Initial characteristics of protocols (design, study size, investigator status) were abstracted from archives, and follow-up characteristics (initiation, completion and publication) from a mailed questionnaire to the principal investigators. Among the 142 submitted protocols, follow-up information was available for 114 (80%). As a whole, 38% of studies were funded by the Greater Lyon research committee. The rate of initiation varied from 62% for studies with no acknowledged funding to 100% for studies with both committee and other simultaneous funding. When initiated, the rate of completion was 62% for studies with at least one funding and 40% for studies without acknowledged funding. When completed, publication was reached for 77% of studies with either committee or external funding, for 58% of studies without acknowledged funding and for 37% of studies with both committee and external funding. Some protocols submitted for funding were initiated and completed without any funding declared. To our understanding this mean that not all protocols submitted really needed funding and also that health care facilities are unaware that they implicitly financially support and pay for biomedical research.

To investigate fraud and errors, scientists have studied cohorts of retraction notices. These researches have been performed using a PubMed search on publication type “retraction of publication” which retrieves the notices of the retractions. We assessed the stability of the indexation of retraction notices over a 15-month period and what was the time-lag to get stability.

Hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia is a rare but ubiquitous genetic disease. Epistaxis is the most frequent and life-threatening manifestation and tacrolimus, an immunosuppressive agent, appears to be an interesting new treatment option because of its anti-angiogenic properties. Our objective was to evaluate, six weeks after the end of the treatment, the efficacy on the duration of nosebleeds of tacrolimus nasal ointment, administered for six weeks to patients with hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia complicated by nosebleeds, and we performed a prospective, multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded, ratio 1:1 phase II study. Patients were recruited from three French Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT) centers between May 2017 and August 2018, with a six-week follow-up, and we included people aged over 18 years, diagnosed with hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia and epistaxis (total duration > 30 min/6 weeks prior to inclusion). Tacrolimus ointment 0.1% was self-administered by the patients twice daily. About 0.1 g of product was to be administered in each nostril with a cotton swab. A total of 50 patients was randomized and treated. Mean epistaxis duration before and after treatment in the tacrolimus group were 324.64 and 249.14 min, respectively, and in the placebo group 224.69 and 188.14 min, respectively. Epistaxis duration improved in both groups, with no significant difference in our main objective comparing epistaxis before and after treatment (p = 0.77); however, there was a significant difference in evolution when comparing epistaxis before and during treatment (p = 0.04). Toxicity was low and no severe adverse events were reported. In conclusion, tacrolimus nasal ointment, administered for six weeks, did not improve epistaxis in HHT patients after the end of the treatment. However, the good tolerance, associated with a significant improvement in epistaxis duration during treatment, encouraged us to perform a phase 3 trial on a larger patient population with a main outcome of epistaxis duration during treatment and a longer treatment time.