Clinical characteristics and therapeutic procedure for four cases with 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia receiving combined Chinese and Western medicine treatment
Authors: Xiaorong Chen
Feifei Chen
Wei Zhang
Zhenwei Wang
Yunfei Lu
Journal: Bioscience trends (2020)
Discipline: BIOLOGY & BIOCHEMISTRY
Keywords: 2019-nCoV; Shufeng Jiedu Capsule; arbidol; lopinavir; ritonavir.
Affiliations: Department of Respiratory Disease, Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China., Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Shanghai, China., Department of Respiratory Disease, Shuguang Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China.

Abstract:  Pneumonia associated with the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is continuously and rapidly circulating at present. No effective antiviral treatment has been verified thus far. We report here the clinical characteristics and therapeutic procedure for four patients with mild or severe 2019-nCoV pneumonia admitted to Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center. All the patients were given antiviral treatment including lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra®), arbidol, and Shufeng Jiedu Capsule (SFJDC, a traditional Chinese medicine) and other necessary support care. After treatment, three patients gained significant improvement in pneumonia associated symptoms, two of whom were confirmed 2019-nCoV negative and discharged, and one of whom was virus negative at the first test. The remaining patient with severe pneumonia had shown signs of improvement by the cutoff date for data collection. Results obtained in the current study may provide clues for treatment of 2019-nCoV pneumonia. The efficacy of antiviral treatment including lopinavir/ritonavir, arbidol, and SFJDC warrants further verification in future study. 

Retracted: No

PubPeer comments:
 Given the circumstances, it is expected that papers about COVID treatment are hastily peer reviewed and accepted. However, in this paper, CT scans of three of the four patients discussed here appear to contain the name of the patients in the top left corner. Gender and age data listed under the name match those in Table 1. This is a huge violation of patient privacy. Even without the names, the paper lists some private information about these patients that might make them identifiable. In addition, there is no statement about IRB approval for this therapeutic regimen. , 
 48h after reporting this to the Editor and Publisher, the paper was silently replaced by a new version, in which the CT scans have black rectangles that cover the patient names. However, if you copy the images into a PDF reader or document reader, the black rectangles do not copy with the image, so you can still read the patient names. Could the authors publisher editor please do a better job and make the patient names really invisible? Like in, flattening the PDF or making a screenshot or whatever it takes. Also, once a paper has been published, it should not be silently replaced with a new version. In this case, obviously, we do not want the original version to be visible, but some update on the paper s website should be given. , 
 In fact, there are two versions: a published version [1] and the advanced publication [2]. In [2], patients names are still there, but indeed, as Dr. Bik pointed out, the content was modified to derive [1] without any notice in the final published paper or on the website. [1] https: www.jstage.jst.go.jp article bst 14 1 14_2020.01030 _article -char en [2] https: www.jstage.jst.go.jp article bst advpub 0 advpub_2020.01030 _article -char en ,