Notice of inadvertent duplicate publication

The BMJ regrets that the paper “Diabetes mellitus and raised serum triglyceride concentration in treated hypertension—are they of prognostic importance? Observational study” by O Samuelsson et al (14 September 1996;313:660-3) was substantially similar to a paper published in the Journal of Internal Medicine entitled “The role of diabetes mellitus and hypertriglyceridaemia as coronary risk factors in treated hypertension: 15 years of follow up of antihypertensive treatment in middle aged men in the Primary Prevention Trial in Göteborg, Sweden” (1994;235:217-27). The statistical evaluation is more thorough in the BMJ paper, but the articles present essentially the same data on the same patients. However, we were not told of the existence of the earlier paper, in contravention of our instructions to authors and of internationally agreed guidelines. Professor Samuelsson has apologised for not making us aware of the possible duplication.