EXPRESSION OF CONCERN: Association of Polymorphisms in Interleukin-18 and Interleukin-28B With Hepatitis B Recurrence...

Y. Li, Y. Shi, J. Chen, B. Cai, B. Ying, and L. Wang, "Association of Polymorphisms in Interleukin-18 and Interleukin-28B with Hepatitis B Recurrence after Liver Transplantation in Chinese Han Population," International Journal of Immunogenetics 39, no. 4 (2012): 346-352, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-313X.2012.01097.x. This Expression of Concern is for the above article, published online on 10 February 2012 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), and has been issued by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Derek Middleton; and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. A third-party organization contacted the publisher regarding concerns pertaining to deceased donor organ sourcing practices in multiple articles, including this one. Credible reporting has been published widely which indicates that research featuring organ transplantation in China did not comply with international ethics standards. As reported by Rogers et al., organ donations in China were widely sourced from executed prisoners prior to 2010 (Rogers et al., 2019). China officially announced an end to the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners on 1 January 2015 (Dai and Xu, 2015). Prior to the official end of the practice, a voluntary organ donation program was piloted in select hospitals from 2010 to 2014 (Huang et al., 2013). The use of harvested organs from prisoners contravenes ethics guidelines that were in place at the time of publication, including guidelines from the Declaration of Helsinki and the Declaration of Istanbul. The Materials and Methods section for this article indicates that relevant donors and patients who underwent liver transplantation at West China Hospital between April 2000 and March 2011 were included in the study. The article states that the study received approval from West China Hospital and that all participants provided informed consent. No information regarding organ donor sources was provided besides details about HBV positivity and donors' genotypes and alleles. Although the Abstract and Materials and Methods both state that donors were enrolled in the study, the authors do not mention that there was any informed consent by donors. Because the majority of liver transplant cases reported in this article likely occurred before the existence of a voluntary organ donation program, serious doubts remain regarding the origins of these donations and the ability of donors to have provided free and willing informed consent in order to participate in this study. The authors did not respond to inquiries made by the publisher. As such, the publisher and editors are not able to verify the institutional review board or ethics committee registration, or the informed consent protocols, for the study. Furthermore, questions remain as to whether the reported organ donations complied with internationally recognized ethical guidelines in place at the time of publication. The journal has decided to issue an Expression of Concern to inform and alert readers.