iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Monday, May 20, rejected a recent study led by Banaras Hindu University (BHU), which claimed that Covaxin raised the rare risk of stroke, and Guillain-Barre syndrome, among others, and said that the findings are “misleading.”
ICMR Director General Dr Rajiv Bahl wrote a letter to the authors of the paper and editor of the journal to immediately remove the acknowledgment to the medical body and publish an erratum, according to the news agency ANI.
Dr Rajiv Bahl, in the letter, added that ICMR cannot be associated with this poorly-designed study which purports to present a “safety analysis” of Covaxin.
The ICMR has also written to the Editor of the New Zealand-based Drug Safety Journal to retract the recently-published Covaxin side effects study by authors from BHU as the apex research body has been “incorrectly and misleadingly acknowledged in the paper”. IANS reported.
“The ICMR is not associated with this study and has not provided any financial or technical support for the research,” the apex research body wrote in the letter.
“Further, you have acknowledged ICMR for research support without any prior approval of or intimation to lCMR, which is inappropriate and unacceptable,” it added.
“We have also noticed that you have similarly acknowledged ICMR in similar previous papers without permission,” Dr Bahl wrote.
He also asked for an explanation from the study’s authors on “why ICMR should not seek legal and administrative action” against them.
