Retraction: Ligustrazine attenuates renal damage by inhibiting endoplasmic reticulum stress in diabetic nephropathy by inactivating MAPK pathways

Retraction of ‘Ligustrazine attenuates renal damage by inhibiting endoplasmic reticulum stress in diabetic nephropathy by inactivating MAPK pathways’ by Hongling Yang et al., RSC Adv., 2018, 8, 21816–21822, DOI: 10.1039/C8RA01674G.

The Royal Society of Chemistry hereby wholly retracts this RSC Advances article due to concerns with the reliability of the data.The images in the article were screened by an image integrity expert who confirmed that some of the western blot images in this paper had been duplicated in other articles. There are no common authors between the papers.The control bands (GAPDH) in Fig. 3A of this paper are identical to the western blot control bands (GAPDH) presented in Fig. 1E of ref. 1.The control bands (GAPDH) in Fig. 4A of this paper are identical to the western blot control bands (GAPDH) presented in Fig. 2C and Fig. 4G of ref. 2.One of the blots in the control band (GAPDH) in Fig. 4A has also been reused as a blot in Fig. 3D of ref. 3.The authors were asked to provide the raw data for this article but did not respond. Given the significance of the concerns about the validity of the data, and the lack of raw data, the findings presented in this paper are not reliable.The authors have been informed but have not responded to any correspondence regarding the retraction.Signed: Laura Fisher, Executive Editor, RSC Advances.Date: 7^th January 2021.