Retracted: Role of Paeonol in an Astrocyte Model of Parkinson Disease.

The authors wish to retract the article. In this article, they found that astrocytes that were pretreated with paeonol significantly rescued MPP+-induced cell viability reduction, and inhibited up-regulation of cell apoptosis, caspase-1 activity, COX2, iNOS, and Bax/Bcl-2 ratio, as well as p-JNK and p-ERK. These findings suggest that paeonol is a neuroprotective agent suitable for use in treatment of PD. However, in subsequent research, they examined the protein levels of p-JNK/p-ERK/p-P38 in different groups. Results showed that in the MPP+ groups, not all these protein levels were higher than those in the control group, because of the flawed data presentations. They also used western blot analysis to assess protein levels of Bax and Bcl-2 in astrocytes. Compared with the control group, Bax protein level was increased, while Bcl-2 protein level was decreased after treatment with MPP+, and these changes were not reversed by paeonol. Based on the above, they ascertained that there must have been some serious mistake in their experiment. As a result, all authors agreed to retract this article. Reference: Maosheng Ye, Yuxin Yi, Shixing Wu, Yong Zhou, Dongji. Role of Paeonol in an Astrocyte Model of Parkinson Disease. Med Sci Monit, 2017; 23: 4740-4748. DOI: 10.12659/MSM.906716.