Assessment of Awareness of Research Misconduct among Interns in Nigeria

Background: Research is the source of evidence for all medical and allied procedures. Research misconducts are wrongdoings during the conduct of research which can be committed intentionally or ignorantly. Research misconduct includes plagiarism, falsification and fabrication of results. Novice researchers may commit misconduct unaware of it being an unwanted practice. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the awareness of interns of research misconduct.Method: The present study was a cross sectional survey that utilized a questionnaire to obtain information on research misconduct among 53 interns at Federal medical center Yola, Nigeria using a purposive sampling technique. Data analysis was done using SPSS V20 utilizing frequency and percentage to summarize the data and chi-square to assess association between categorical variables.Results: Majority (35.7%) of the participants were within the age range of 26-30. Males were 34 (65.4%) and mostly nurses were 17 (32.5%). Majority of the participants 45 (86.5%) were aware of informed consent but only less than two-fifth (2/5) were aware of declaration of Helsinki. More than 4/5 of the participants were aware of plagiarism (86.8%), fabrication (94.3%) and falsification (86.6%) of results in research.Conclusion: Participants in this study showed a significant level of awareness of research misconduct

Humoral immunological kinetics of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection and diagnostic performance of serological assays for coronavirus disease 2019: an analysis of global reports

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to rise and second waves are reported in some countries, serological test kits and strips are being considered to scale up an adequate laboratory response. This study provides an update on the kinetics of humoral immune response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and performance characteristics of serological protocols (lateral flow assay [LFA], chemiluminescence immunoassay [CLIA] and ELISA) used for evaluations of recent and past SARS-CoV-2 infection. A thorough and comprehensive review of suitable and eligible full-text articles was performed on PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Wordometer and medRxiv from 10 January to 16 July 2020. These articles were searched using the Medical Subject Headings terms 'COVID-19', 'Serological assay', 'Laboratory Diagnosis', 'Performance characteristics', 'POCT', 'LFA', 'CLIA', 'ELISA' and 'SARS-CoV-2'. Data from original research articles on SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection >= second day postinfection were included in this study. In total, there were 7938 published articles on humoral immune response and laboratory diagnosis of COVID-19. Of these, 74 were included in this study. The detection, peak and decline period of blood anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM, IgG and total antibodies for point-of-care testing (POCT), ELISA and CLIA vary widely. The most promising of these assays for POCT detected anti-SARS-CoV-2 at day 3 postinfection and peaked on the 15th day; ELISA products detected anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM and IgG at days 2 and 6 then peaked on the eighth day; and the most promising CLIA product detected anti-SARS-CoV-2 at day 1 and peaked on the 30th day. The most promising LFA, ELISA and CLIA that had the best performance characteristics were those targeting total SARS-CoV-2 antibodies followed by those targeting anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG then IgM. Essentially, the CLIA-based SARS-CoV-2 tests had the best performance characteristics, followed by ELISA then POCT. Given the varied performance characteristics of all the serological assays, there is a need to continuously improve their detection thresholds, as well as to monitor and re-evaluate their performances to assure their significance and applicability for COVID-19 clinical and epidemiological purposes