"The article 'Ergosterol Attenuates LPS-Induced Myocardial Injury by Modulating Oxidative Stress and Apoptosis in Rats' [Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry 2018;48:583–592;DOI: 10.1159/000491887] by Jianjun Xu, Cai Lin, Tingting Wang, Peng Zhang, Zhengjun Liu and Caijiao Lu has been retracted by the current and former Publishers and the Editor.
After the publication of this article, concerns were raised about the integrity of some of the data presented. Specifically, following publication, it was brought to our attention that the Western Blot in Figures 5 and 6 in the article are present as Figures 4 and 5 in a later article by another group [1]. Additionally, the bands for cleaved caspase 9 in Figure 5 in the article are present in Figure 10 in an earlier article by Chen et al., 2017 [2].
The authors did not respond to requests to comment on the concerns and provide the raw data within the given timeframe despite multiple attempts of contact. The matter has been raised to the corresponding author's institution who did not respond to our request for an investigation. Given the severity of the concerns raised this article is being retracted.
The authors have not responded to our correspondence regarding this retraction despite multiple attempts of contact.
1. Xie, Q., Li, S., Gao, Y. et al. Ergosterol Attenuates Isoproterenol-Induced Myocardial Cardiotoxicity. Cardiovasc Toxicol 20, 500–506 (2020).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12012-020-09574-6
2. Chen, L., Liu, P., Feng, X., & Ma, C. Salidroside suppressing LPS‐induced myocardial injury by inhibiting ROS‐mediated PI 3K/Akt/mTOR pathway in vitro and in vivo. Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, 21(12), 3178-3189 (2017).
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcmm.12871