A scientific sleuth and a mother who nearly lost her daughter to a hormonal condition teamed up in January to flag a series of papers that misnamed a medication for pregnant women. They have recently started to see the fruits of their labors: one retraction and three corrections.

In 2014, Tara Skopelitis, a lab manager at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, was given weekly progesterone injections to prevent preterm birth for her daughter. Six years later, after her daughter showed symptoms of an unknown hormonal condition which still hasn’t been formally diagnosed, Skopelitis discovered she should have received synthetic progesterone variant 17α-hydroxyprogesterone caproate, often referred to as 17-OHPC, often referred to as 17-OHPC, 17P.

The confusion lies within the literature, Skopelitis says: Many clinical trials and papers refer to 17P as intramuscular progesterone, as if they are interchangeable or even the same compound. Skopelitis identified 69 papers that misname 17P as intramuscular progesterone.

A recent retraction takes a step closer to correcting the body of literature surrounding intramuscular progesterone. The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine in June 2024 retracted the 2012 paper, "Matched sample comparison of intramuscular versus vaginal micronized progesterone for prevention of preterm birth".

Source:  https://retractionwatch.com/2024/09/17/first-paper-retracted-in-string-of-studies-using-the-wrong-medication-name/#more-130045