Retracted Osteoarthritis Study Shows How Duplicated Images Unravel a Paper

A 2019 study that appeared to offer a promising plant-derived therapy for osteoarthritis has been formally retracted, the latest chapter in a long-running effort by journals to clean up the biomedical literature. The paper, published in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, had reported that acteoside, a phenylethanoid glycoside found in medicinal plants, could suppress inflammatory signaling in rats with osteoarthritis by acting on the JAK/STAT pathway. The editors of the journal have now withdrawn their endorsement of the work, stating that they no longer have confidence in the data presented in the article.

The retraction notice, published in the same journal, explains that after publication, concerns were raised regarding image irregularities. When the authors were contacted to clarify the issues, they did not respond. In the world of research integrity, that silence is often decisive. Journals typically give authors an opportunity to explain anomalies in their figures, and when those explanations fail to materialize, editors are left with little choice but to retract. The notice is unambiguous: the editors no longer trust the findings, and the scientific record has been corrected accordingly.

The specific concerns are technical but instructive. According to the retraction notice, a panel in Figure 3B of the retracted paper, labeled as an IL-1 beta condition at a concentration of 10 nanograms per milliliter, appears to overlap with a panel in Figure 6C of a separate 2019 article on nasopharyngeal carcinoma published in Cancer Cell International. Strikingly, the same panel also appears to overlap with a panel in Figure 2D of a second, unrelated paper on pancreatic cancer that has itself since been retracted. In plain terms, identical or nearly identical images seem to have been used to represent entirely different experiments in entirely different disease contexts, spanning osteoarthritis, nasopharyngeal cancer, and pancreatic cancer.

This kind of image duplication is one of the most common triggers for retractions in the modern era of research integrity screening. Western blots, microscopy fields, and other gel-based or imaging outputs are supposed to be unique records of individual experiments. When the same image shows up in multiple papers, or in multiple figures within a single paper, it suggests either careless figure assembly or deliberate fabrication. Software tools and vigilant readers now routinely flag such overlaps, and journals have invested heavily in automated screening pipelines that compare figures across vast swaths of the published literature. What once might have slipped through unnoticed for decades can now be detected within months or years of publication.

The retraction also contains a second, more troubling element: a disputed authorship claim. One of the listed authors, Zhiguang Qiao, stated that he did not contribute to the study and did not consent to being listed as an author of the article. The remaining authors, according to the notice, have not responded to correspondence regarding the retraction. Authorship disputes of this kind raise questions that go beyond the integrity of the data itself. Authorship carries professional credit, responsibility, and accountability, and being listed on a paper without consent is a serious matter. Conversely, when a paper is retracted, every listed author shares in the reputational damage, which is precisely why consent and genuine contribution matter so much.

The original study, published on 7 October 2019, had explored a question of real clinical interest. Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and its hallmark is the slow degeneration of joint cartilage accompanied by chronic inflammation. Current treatments largely manage symptoms with painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs, but nothing on the market halts or reverses the underlying disease. That gap has fueled intense interest in natural compounds with anti-inflammatory properties, and acteoside has been one of the candidates. Found in plants such as those used in traditional medicine systems, acteoside had been reported in various laboratory studies to modulate inflammatory signaling, and the JAK/STAT pathway, a chain of molecular interactions that transmits signals from the cell surface to the nucleus, is a well-established regulator of immune and inflammatory responses. Drugs targeting this pathway are already approved for conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, so the hypothesis that a plant compound might act similarly in osteoarthritis was scientifically plausible.

Plausible, however, is not the same as demonstrated. The retraction does not merely erase a single data point; it removes the evidentiary basis for the paper’s central claim that acteoside inhibits inflammatory responses via JAK/STAT signaling in osteoarthritic rats. Readers who encounter the paper in databases or citation lists will now find it flagged as retracted, and responsible researchers will exclude it from systematic reviews and meta-analyses. This matters because complementary and alternative medicine research is frequently cited in public discussions of herbal remedies, and retracted findings can linger in the popular imagination long after the formal correction. A retraction notice is a small document, but its function is to stop the spread of unreliable conclusions before they harden into accepted wisdom.

The case also illustrates the interconnected nature of research integrity problems. The two articles whose figures allegedly overlap with the retracted osteoarthritis paper are themselves notable: one, on circular RNA in nasopharyngeal carcinoma, remains in the literature as far as the notice indicates, while the other, a study of solasodine against pancreatic cancer, is explicitly labeled as retracted. When the same images surface across papers from what appear to be different research groups or different disease areas, integrity investigators often look for common threads, such as shared figure-preparation services, paper mills, or overlapping authorship networks. The retraction notice itself does not draw such conclusions, and it would be wrong to speculate beyond what the editors have stated. But the pattern of a single panel appearing in three different disease contexts is exactly the kind of red flag that has, in other cases, led to much larger sweeps of retractions.

For the journal, BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, the retraction is part of a broader reckoning. Journals in the complementary medicine space have faced particular scrutiny in recent years, in part because the field attracts a high volume of submissions and in part because several journals in adjacent areas experienced mass retractions linked to paper mills. Editors have responded with stricter checks at submission, including image forensics, statistical scrutiny, and requirements for raw data. The fact that this retraction was issued years after the original publication, and that the notice was published in 2026 with a new article number and DOI, reflects the often slow but methodical pace of post-publication correction. Investigations take time, correspondence with authors can drag on for months, and legal considerations sometimes complicate matters further.

What should readers take away from this episode? First, that the self-correcting machinery of science, however slow, does function. A paper published in 2019 has been formally retracted, its problems documented, and its authors given the chance to respond. Second, that images are evidence. The figures in a scientific paper are not illustrations; they are the data themselves, and their integrity is inseparable from the integrity of the conclusions. Third, that authorship is a responsibility, not just a credit line, and disputes about who did or did not contribute are treated with seriousness by editors. And finally, that single studies, especially early animal studies of natural compounds, should always be viewed as provisional. The hypothesis that acteoside might calm inflammation in arthritic joints may yet be tested rigorously by other groups with clean data. Until then, the scientific record now accurately reflects what is and is not known, and that accuracy is the foundation on which all future research depends.

Subject of Research: Retraction of a study on acteoside and the JAK/STAT inflammatory pathway in osteoarthritis due to image irregularities

Article Title: Retraction Note: Acteoside inhibits inflammatory response via JAK/STAT signaling pathway in osteoarthritic rats

Article References: Qiao, Z., Tang, J., Wu, W., Tang, J., & Liu, M. (2026). Retraction Note: Acteoside inhibits inflammatory response via JAK/STAT signaling pathway in osteoarthritic rats. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, 26(1), Article 285. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-026-05627-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12906-026-05627-5

Keywords: retraction, acteoside, osteoarthritis, JAK/STAT pathway, research integrity, image duplication, BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, authorship dispute, inflammation, natural compounds, scientific publishing, figure manipulation