Gao L, Tan A, Wang Z, Wei L, Wang X. Int J Gen Med. 2025;18:2651—2657.

We, the Editors and Publisher of the International Journal of General Medicine, have retracted the published article.

After publication, a third party alerted the Journal to concerns regarding the ethics approval process, the clinical trial registration, and the authorship on the article.

Further investigation conducted by the Journal and Publisher identified

discrepancies between the clinical trial registration and the details reported in the article; concerns regarding the authorship and affiliations listed on the article.

The authors have also requested the retraction of the article.

As verifying the validity of published work is core to the integrity of the scholarly record, we are therefore retracting the article.

We have been informed in our decision-making by our editorial policies and the COPE guidelines.

The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.