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Editorial Note

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Editorial Note: Prolonged immune alteration following resolution of acute inflammation in humans

  • The PLOS One Editors

After this article [1] was published, concerns were raised about Fig S1A. Specifically, the LC-MS/MS chromatograms in Fig S1A, with different labelling, appear similar to Figs in [2–15]

In response, the corresponding author stated that Fig S1A does not report experimental results for the study reported in [1] and can be disregarded. Fig S1A was used for illustrative purposes only, to show the type of LC-MS/MS data of analytical standards produced by the Shimadzu LC-20AD HPLC and Shimadzu SIL-20AC autoinjector and QTrap 5500 (ABSciex, Warrington, UK) liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer instrumentation, as described in [16].

During editorial follow-up, another issue emerged regarding results reported in Fig 4.

The corresponding author reanalyzed the LC-MS/MS lipid data in [1] using MultiQuant software (ABSciex, Warrington, UK) with the result that the SPM values reported in Fig 4 were below the limits of quantification and Figs 4E-H should be disregarded. They stated that this concern did not apply to the prostanoid results. This reanalysis was reported in [17].

A preprint [18] by Jesmond Dalli, a co-author of [1], reported another reanalysis using methodologies to determine signal to noise ratios as reported in [19], and called into question the reliability of [17]. The last two authors of [1] expressed different views on comparing sensitivity and limits of quantitation of lipid mediators between [1] and [19] and D. Gilroy noted that the equipment used in [19] is different to that used in [1]. J. Dalli stands by the findings reported in [1].

SPM data presented in Fig 4 should be interpreted in the context of both [17] and [18] and the apparent disagreement within the author group regarding the reliability of these results. A member of the PLOS One Editorial Board stated that SPM results in Fig 4 are not essential in supporting the article’s main conclusions [1].

The Data Availability statement of [1] is updated to: The individual-level data underlying the remainder of the results can be found at https://zenodo.org/records/10532531.

Owing to the concerns about similarity with previously published content, including [2], published in 2016 by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America [2], which is not offered under a CC BY license, this article [1] was republished on March 17, 2025, to remove Fig S1. Interested readers can view the figure of concern in Fig 3A of [2].

References

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  4. 4. Walker ME, Souza PR, Colas RA, Dalli J. 13-Series resolvins mediate the leukocyte-platelet actions of atorvastatin and pravastatin in inflammatory arthritis. FASEB J. 2017;31(8):3636–48. pmid:28465323
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Citation: The PLOS One Editors (2025) Editorial Note: Prolonged immune alteration following resolution of acute inflammation in humans. PLoS ONE 20(3): e0321981. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321981

Published: March 31, 2025

Copyright: © 2025 The PLOS One Editors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.