A commission set up to investigate accusations of fraud regarding a 2005 paper published in The Lancet by cancer specialist Jon Sudbo at the Norwegian Radium Hospital in Oslo, plans to examine his 38 other studies. Some of these papers carry greater medical sway than the 2005 paper, experts say.
And another prominent journal 鈥� the New England Journal of Medicine 鈥� will also to re-examine two papers it published by Sudbo. 鈥淲e are gathering information to see if there鈥檚 any reason to doubt the veracity of those papers,鈥� Karen Pederson, a spokeswoman for the journal told New 杏吧原创.
A 2001 paper by Sudbo, published in the NEJM and detailing how an abnormal number of chromosomes could predispose a person to mouth cancer, generated particular interest in the field.
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But Sudbo was accused of fabricating the existence of 454 people with oral cancer for his 2005 Lancet study, and later verbally admitted this to the hospital. A commission was then set up by the hospital to investigate. It will produce a report by April 2006 detailing whether the paper鈥檚 recommendations have had any impact on the treatment of oral cancer.
Stein Vaaler, the hospital鈥檚 strategy director, says the commission will also examine the integrity of Sudbo鈥檚 previous research. 鈥淵ou have to be 100% sure that there is no fraud in any other papers,鈥� Vaaler told New 杏吧原创.
Meanwhile, The Lancet has published an 鈥渆xpression of concern鈥� while it awaits written confirmation from the investigating committee that the study was a fabrication.
Extended review
According to Saman Warnakulasuriya of King鈥檚 College London, UK, who specialises in oral medicine, Sudbo鈥檚 earlier papers carried greater influence on current practice than the 2005 Lancet paper under particular scrutiny. This study reported that some anti-inflammatory drugs, known as NSAIDs, could reduce the risk of oral cancer.
Warnakulasuriya says that, because of the cardiovascular risks associated with these anti-inflammatory drugs, doctors remain hesitant to prescribe them to patients as a preventive agent for cancer. Therefore the study is unlikely to have had an impact on clinical practice, he suggests.
But some of Sudbo鈥檚 previous papers 鈥� which offered evidence that chromosomal abnormalities in mouth cells provided a better indicator of precancerous activity than current methods of detection that look for disorganised cell arrangement 鈥� may have had more of an impact.
Warnakulasuriya notes that no other research group has, as yet, replicated those findings. He says that other groups have started carrying out this detection method, called ploidy analysis, on an experimental basis to see if it works.
He says that clinicians in the UK had begun considering whether to look for abnormal chromosome count in sample cells as part of some routine tests for mouth cancer risk. But he adds that such plans appear unlikely to proceed now, given concern about Sudbo鈥檚 recent work.
