Last year, Scientific Reports retracted a paper comparing the condition, which the authors dubbed Middle East Pain Syndrome, to rheumatoid arthritis for failing to establish a clear distinction between the two ailments. The new article, published in January 2025 in BMC Rheumatology with two overlapping authors, compares MEPS to fibromyalgia, claiming it is distinct for its "hand tufts spur-like excrescences".

A sleuth raised concerns about the new paper to BMC Rheumatology in a February 8, 2025 email. He critiqued the cross-sectional design and the study’s lack of a control group, and said bone spurs can occur in other diseases, like hyperparathyroidism and osteoarthritis.

The BMC paper includes a figure from the retracted paper, which was published in 2021. But because the study was conducted in 2023 and 2024, "the images in this paper cannot be from patients included in this study". Elbeialy, corresponding author, justified the re-use of the image, saying the cohort in the BMC study is the same group of patients "analyzed across multiple research projects". He also defended referencing the retracted paper: "our study does not rely on it for the specific claim in question", he wrote on PubPeer. However, he offered to remove the reference as part of a "Correction plan".

 
Source https://retractionwatch.com/2025/03/17/bmc-rheumatology-article-middle-east-pain-syndrome/

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