RETRACTION: “TOENAIL-BASED METAL CONCENTRATIONS AND YOUNG-ONSET BREAST CANCER”

After publication of our article “Toenail-Based Metal Concentrations and Young-Onset Breast Cancer” (1), we noticed that we had made a programming error when we merged the toenail metal measurements with the other covariates. This resulted in many individuals being assigned incorrect values for their metal concentrations. After correcting the error, we re-ran all statistical models and found differences in the reported estimates, as well as a reduction in the sample size due to missing data from members of matched pair sets (original n = 1,217; new n = 1,214).

Despite these differences, our finding of “no statistically significant associations between any metals and breast cancer” was unchanged, but because all reported effect estimates changed somewhat, we have decided to issue a retraction of our article. We apologize for this error.