LAUSR

A paper by Lucia Malaguarnera, Salvatore Pignatelli, Jacques Simporè, Mariano Malaguarnera and Salvatore Musumeci (Eur. Cytokine Netw. October-December 2002; 13(4): 425-30) [1] reported the relationship between plasma levels of IL-12, IL-18, and severity of malaria in African children. The same authors have reported the relationship between plasma levels of IL-12, IL-18 and TGF-b, and severity of malaria in African children in two other articles [2, 3]. The findings in these three studies are similar and demonstrate that plasma levels of IL-18 and IL-12 were significantly higher in children with mild malaria than in children with a severe form of the disease. Much of the data presented in each of the three papers appear to be identical. The corresponding author (Professor S. Musumeci) has been contacted by the Editors of the journal Parasite Immunology. He has indicated that the Editors of Cytokine and European Cytokine Network were not alerted to the fact that the manuscript included previously published data from Parasite Immunology. The author notes that some data have been duplicated in these papers. The original publication in Parasite Immunology was not cited in the subsequent papers. Redundant or duplicate publication of scientific data without explicit acknowledgement of prior publication contravenes the Vancouver Guidelines on Publication Ethics: http://www.icmje.org/index.html.