key: cord-0962170-oj1v30fn
authors: Kluger, Nicolas
title: Pitfalls of possible reporting of same patients with COVID‐19 in dermatology journals
date: 2020-06-03
journal: J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol
DOI: 10.1111/jdv.16690
sha: 7cd09ed473d24fe40bc4800b47475e014995fa90
doc_id: 962170
cord_uid: oj1v30fn

The Editor in chief and Deputy Editors of the JAMA recently shared their concern regarding possible reporting of patients in more than one manuscript, while this has not been clearly indicated in the submission [1]. Although the unprecedented context of the COVID‐19 outbreak justifies efforts for rapid dissemination of knowledge, such practice may be responsible for inaccurate interpretation and overestimation of published data [1]. Similar concern applies to dermatology. In Spain, the national COVID Piel study have reported 372 patients with skin manifestations related with COVID‐19, including 71 patients with pseudo‐chilblains, from April 3(rd) to April 16(th) [2].

Funding -None

The Editor in chief and Deputy Editors of the JAMA recently shared their concern regarding possible reporting of patients in more than one manuscript, while this has not been clearly indicated in the submission [1] . Although the unprecedented context of the COVID-19 outbreak justifies efforts for rapid dissemination of knowledge, such practice may be responsible for inaccurate interpretation and overestimation of published data [1] . Similar concern applies to dermatology. In Spain, the national COVID Piel study have reported 372 patients with skin manifestations related with COVID-19, including 71 patients with pseudo-chilblains, from April 3 rd to April 16 th [2] . One of the co-authors published in the meantime a series of 132 patients with 

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved series on their own. We found also manuscripts mentioning multiple reports of the same patient. In

year-old-girl has been also published independently [9], but the authors mentioned the previous series [8] in the article [9] . Some cases need also better clarification. Joob & Wiwanitkit submitted on the same day two seemingly looking-like case reports in two different journals [10,11].

However, the corresponding author kindly confirmed that both cases were different patients.

With the very high number of publications on COVID-19, authors need to remain transparent for the reader about multiple reports of same patients to avoid misinterpretation of the data [1] .

Disclaimer: The present letter relies only on accepted online pre-proofs before they are published in their final form

Editorial Concern-Possible Reporting of the Same Patients With COVID-19 in Different Reports