Tag: NIH

Over 100 Key Alzheimer’s Papers Found To Have Suspicious Data

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

An investigation by Science has shown that over 100 key papers on Alzheimer’s research have used falsified data. The papers all have a common author – veteran neuropathologist Eliezer Masliah, a key researcher at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), typically as first or last author.

The investigation has found that scores of Masliah’s lab studies at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and NIA are riddled with apparently falsified Western blots (images used to show the presence of proteins) and micrographs of brain tissue. Numerous images seem to have been inappropriately reused within and across papers, sometimes published years apart in different journals, under supposedly different experimental conditions.

At UCSD, Masliah had amassed decades of experience researching Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, amassing 800 papers. Some important topics in them, such as alpha-synuclein (a protein linked to both diseases), continue to have great influence. The US Congress had released a flood of funding for Alzheimer’s research, US$2.6 billion for last year’s budget, far outstripping that for the rest of the NIA, and Masliah was an ideal choice for its neuroscience division director. This was a position which was enormously influential for Alzheimer’s research in the US as well as internationally, allowing him to fund selected research over and above others with better scores form peer-review.

One of the drugs being developed based on his work is prasinezumab, which failed to show benefit over placebo in a trial of 316 Parkinson’s patients – but resulting in a host of adverse effects, though none serious. The drug was based on an idea by Masliah and another scientist (whose papers were also seemingly doctored) that a vaccine-like approach could cause the body to create antibodies against harmful precursors in both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Questions began to be raised about his research two years ago. These were assessed by a team of forensic analysts and a neuroscientist, who concluded, “In our opinion, this pattern of anomalous data raises a credible concern for research misconduct and calls into question a remarkably large body of scientific work.” They acknowledge that accidental duplication is a possibility, and that images can acquire artefacts resembling improper manipulation during the publication process.

Columbia University neurobiologist Mu Yang used specialised software to detect similarities and alterations in images. She had previously worked with the team investigating manipulation in Alzheimer’s and stroke data. In her analysis, duplicated sections in certain Western blots that had been “seamlessly blended” quickly floated into view, she said. “It tells me someone put a lot of thought and effort into the image … and usually indicates something is very wrong.”

A team of 11 neuroscientists was less charitable when they viewed the images. Samuel Gandy, a prominent neurologist at the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center said that he was “floored” by what he saw, noting that even a “bus driver” could see that two images of a mitochondrion published two years apart were identical. “Hundreds of images,” he said in a video interview. “There had to have been ongoing manipulation for years.”

In response to this latest dossier, the NIH issued a statement stating that there was a finding of “research misconduct” for Masliah over reuse of figures in two papers, further stating that Masliah no longer serves as NIA’s neuroscience division director. The NIH stated that it had started its own investigation in 2023.

Source: Science

A Trend of Amalgamations is Underway for Medical Schemes

Image by Gustavo Fring on Pexels

A trend of amalgamations is underway in the South African private healthcare industry, in the face of growing challenges and the impending introduction of National Health Insurance (NHI).

Escalating healthcare inflation and costs, a declining and ageing membership, the impact of the COVID pandemic and a growing burden of disease are all impacting the not-for-profit Medical Scheme industry, which is highly regulated.

Medical scheme consolidation is one of the prominent trends, particularly given the prospect of NHI on the horizon, where smaller schemes will not compete, said Lee Callakoppen, principal officer of Bonitas Medical Fund.

The Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) advises that schemes that cannot compete sustainably on price should consider amalgamation partners, Callakoppen said.

“The trend towards amalgamations is not only for the sustainability of the medical scheme but for the benefit of members who ‘own’ the fund’.

“It is not only the call from CMS for schemes to join forces but also strict regulations around minimum solvency ratios and reserves which are more difficult for smaller schemes to maintain.”

It is a requirement of the Medical Schemes Act that medical schemes shall at all times maintain their business in a financially sound condition. They need to have sufficient assets for conducting business, providing for liabilities and having the prescribed solvency requirements of 25%, said Callakoppen.

“It’s a big ask for small schemes in this volatile and uncertain healthcare market,” he said.

A trend of amalgamation for small schemesThe CMS provides regulatory supervision of more than 80 medical schemes registered in the country and oversees amalgamation prospects.

One proviso for amalgamation is that schemes should complement each other and provide a more comprehensive offering to members.

“One clear indicator of risk is the size of the pool of lives being covered,” said Callakoppen. “Schemes with smaller risk pools are struggling to survive and experience more volatile claims”.

“Amalgamation into a bigger scheme means cross-subsidisation of costs. It is a trend I believe will continue, if not accelerate. In fact, in the past decade, we have seen 28 amalgamations approved by the CMS and the Competition Commission.”

The NHI has been criticised for potentially stifling innovation in healthcare, as well as not actually being able to fix the country’s flawed and unequal healthcare system.

Source: BusinessTech

US Health Body Admits Funding Coronavirus Enhancement Study

SARS-CoV-2 virus. Source: Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

In an unexpected turn of events, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has acknowledged that it funded research into enhancing coronavirus infectivity, Vanity Fair reported.

The agency had last week sent a letter to the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce stating that its grant recipient, EcoHealth Alliance, enhanced a bat coronavirus to become potentially more infectious to humans. This was an “unexpected result” of the research, done in collaboration with Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The NIH letter also noted that EcoHealth Alliance violated terms of its grant conditions, which had stipulated that it was supposed to report to the agency if its work boosted viral growth by a factor of 10.

EcoHealth Alliance was supposed to submit a progress report at the end of the grant period in 2019 but it didn’t arrive at the NIH until August 2021, according to Vanity Fair. However, in a statement to Vanity Fair, EcoHealth Alliance said that it had reported the relevant information “as soon as we were made aware, in our four year report in April 2018.”

In that missing progress report (dated August 2021), lab mice infected with the enhanced virus became more ill than those infected with a wild one, reported Vanity Fair.

The Vanity Fair report also reveals a rather concerning detail contained in a leaked EcoHealth Alliance grant proposal submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2018. EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of virology proposed to engineer a furin cleavage site for the coronavirus to more easily enter humans cells. This matches a distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code.

“If I applied for funding to paint Central Park purple and was denied, but then a year later we woke up to find Central Park painted purple, I’d be a prime suspect,” Jamie Metzl, a member of the WHO advisory committee on human genome editing, told Vanity Fair.

In its letter to US Congress, the NIH emphasised that the virus EcoHealth Alliance was studying could not have sparked the pandemic, as there was a vast genetic difference between it and SARS-CoV-2. NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, also issued a statement addressing the concerns raised by the letter, noting that such claims were “demonstrably false.”

“The scientific evidence to date indicates that the virus is likely the result of viral evolution in nature, potentially jumping directly to humans or through an unidentified intermediary animal host,” Dr Collins said in the statement.

Gilles Demaneuf, a data scientist in New Zealand, told Vanity Fair, “I cannot be sure that [COVID originated from] a research-related accident or infection from a sampling trip. But I am 100% sure there was a massive cover-up.”

In response to these criticisms of poor oversight and bad scientific judgment, the NIH has “circled its wagons”, Vanity Fair observed.

Source: Vanity Fair