[Retracted] Effects of botulinum toxin A on endometriosis‑associated pain and its related mechanism

Fubo Tian, Wuzhong Cheng, Jianying Hu, Shaoqiang Huang, Shen Sun
Molecular medicine reports · 2020 · vol. 23(1) , pp. 1 · doi:10.3892/mmr.2020.11674 · PMID:33179103 · PMC7684856 · W3098956676
retraction OA: gold CC0
📄 Open PDF Full text JSON View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-13 ⓘ

The authors requested retraction of their paper on botulinum toxin A for endometriosis-associated pain due to potential flaws in animal study methodology and inaccurate claims of novelty.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-13 · read from full text ⓘ

This retracted paper examined the effects and proposed mechanism of botulinum toxin A on endometriosis-associated pain using animal experiments conducted several years prior to publication. After publication, concerns were raised about the manner in which the animal studies were performed and about whether the work was truly novel compared with existing research. The authors conceded that the experiments may have had methodological flaws and that the study’s contribution was only incremental after re-review of the literature, and they requested retraction due to potentially procedural errors and misleading claims of novelty. This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it specifically investigated botulinum toxin A as a treatment and mechanistic contributor to endometriosis-associated pain, but was retracted.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Following the publication of this paper, an interested reader drew to the attention of the Editorial Office that there were potentially concerns regarding the manner in which the botulinum toxin animal studies had been performed, and also in terms of the novelty of the study, wherein the authors had claimed that their study was the first to have explored the use of botulinum toxin for endometriosis‑related pain. Having asked the authors to comment on these points, they have conceded that the animal experiments, which were performed 5 years previously, may have been flawed from the perspective of the methodology, although the group are no longer able to contact the person who performed the experiments. Furthermore, the authors have subsequently re‑reviewed the field of botulinum toxin usage in endometriosis, and concede that their study has made only an incremental advance in knowledge in this area. Therefore, on the grounds that this study may have contained procedural errors in the animal experiments which the authors were unable to verify on account of having lost contact with the person who performed them, and in view of the misinformation regarding the novelty of the study, the authors have requested that the paper be retracted from the publication. The Editor of Molecular Medicine Reports has agreed that the paper should be retracted; moreover, the authors apologize to the readership for any inconvenience caused. [the original article was published in Molecular Medicine Reports 22: 4351-4359, 2020; DOI: 10.3892/mmr.2020.11501].
Full text 4,088 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · click to expand
Print ISSN: 1791-2997 Online ISSN: 1791-3004 International Journal of Molecular Medicine is an international journal devoted to molecular mechanisms of human disease. International Journal of Oncology is an international journal devoted to oncology research and cancer treatment. Covers molecular medicine topics such as pharmacology, pathology, genetics, neuroscience, infectious diseases, molecular cardiology, and molecular surgery. Oncology Reports is an international journal devoted to fundamental and applied research in Oncology. Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine is an international journal devoted to laboratory and clinical medicine. Oncology Letters is an international journal devoted to Experimental and Clinical Oncology. Explores a wide range of biological and medical fields, including pharmacology, genetics, microbiology, neuroscience, and molecular cardiology. International journal addressing all aspects of oncology research, from tumorigenesis and oncogenes to chemotherapy and metastasis. Multidisciplinary open-access journal spanning biochemistry, genetics, neuroscience, environmental health, and synthetic biology. Open-access journal combining biochemistry, pharmacology, immunology, and genetics to advance health through functional nutrition. Publishes open-access research on using epigenetics to advance understanding and treatment of human disease. An International Open Access Journal Devoted to General Medicine. Retraction Open Access - Authors: - Article Number: 36|Published online on: November 9, 2020https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2020.11674 - Expand metrics + Mol Med Rep 22: [Related article:] 4351-4359, 2020; DOI: 10.3892/mmr.2020.11501 Following the publication of this paper, an interested reader drew to the attention of the Editorial Office that there were potentially concerns regarding the manner in which the botulinum toxin animal studies had been performed, and also in terms of the novelty of the study, wherein the authors had claimed that their study was the first to have explored the use of botulinum toxin for endometriosis-related pain. Having asked the authors to comment on these points, they have conceded that the animal experiments, which were performed 5 years previously, may have been flawed from the perspective of the methodology, although the group are no longer able to contact the person who performed the experiments. Furthermore, the authors have subsequently re-reviewed the field of botulinum toxin usage in endometriosis, and concede that their study has made only an incremental advance in knowledge in this area. Therefore, on the grounds that this study may have contained procedural errors in the animal experiments which the authors were unable to verify on account of having lost contact with the person who performed them, and in view of the misinformation regarding the novelty of the study, the authors have requested that the paper be retracted from the publication. The Editor of Molecular Medicine Reports has agreed that the paper should be retracted; moreover, the authors apologize to the readership for any inconvenience caused. Copy and paste a formatted citation Spandidos Publications style Tian F, Cheng W, Hu J, Huang S and Sun S: [Retracted] Effects of botulinum toxin A on endometriosis‑associated pain and its related mechanism. Mol Med Rep 23: 36, 2021. APA Tian, F., Cheng, W., Hu, J., Huang, S., & Sun, S. (2021). [Retracted] Effects of botulinum toxin A on endometriosis‑associated pain and its related mechanism. Molecular Medicine Reports, 23, 36. https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2020.11674 MLA Tian, F., Cheng, W., Hu, J., Huang, S., Sun, S."[Retracted] Effects of botulinum toxin A on endometriosis‑associated pain and its related mechanism". Molecular Medicine Reports 23.1 (2021): 36. Chicago Tian, F., Cheng, W., Hu, J., Huang, S., Sun, S."[Retracted] Effects of botulinum toxin A on endometriosis‑associated pain and its related mechanism". Molecular Medicine Reports 23, no. 1 (2021): 36. https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2020.11674

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Condition tags

endometriosis

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-21T06:12:49.409960+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:21:36.268089+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK