Dear Sir,
We fully agree with the content of the introducing editorial of your new journal advocating a scientific search for truth and embracing scientific excellence as guiding principle.
In this light, we were very surprised by the publication by Álvarez et al[1] in your new journal considering the low quality of this work and the misleading conclusions. Álvarez et al report on an observational study and present a narrative review on the effects of radiotherapy for ostheoarticular degenerative disorders (OADD). Remarkably, the STROBE recommendations for reporting observational studies were not followed, a policy adopted by Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, and presumably, also by Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Open. In addition, the credibility of the findings is further undermined by several methodological flaws (heterogeneous sample, dependency of observations, no valid outcome measure, no control group). In the discussion section a narrative review is presented claiming to include the results of all clinical studies on the effectiveness of low dose radiotherapy in OADD published after 2000 but ignoring our results of a previous systematic review[2] and two randomized controlled trials, the only ones performed according internationally accepted standards[[3], [4], [5]]. Based on this inferior work Álvarez et al conclude that low dose radiotherapy is an evidence-based treatment option in OADD as osteoarthritis. As two of the authors of this article also co-authored one or more replies to our previous work[[6], [7], [8]], and one member of our research group addressed these issues as reviewer of the paper from Álvarez et al, we conclude that our previous work was deliberately disregarded by them. Our work provides strong evidence that the effect of low dose radiotherapy in hand and knee osteoarthritis is not clinically significant, and this evidence is not taken into account in the review of Álvarez et al. In our view authors are to blame for ignoring our work and their biased conclusions, because low dose radiotherapy is a potentially harmful treatment option.
We would like to discuss with you how to deal with this delicate matter. We feel that withdrawal of this paper would be most appropriate given the ambitions of your journal, but we are also happy to comment on this paper in a letter to the editor.
References
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