Erratum to: Clin Exp Med (2005) 5(4):184–189 DOI: 10.1007/s10238-005-0084-1

This article [1] was submitted and subsequently published in Clinical and Experimental Medicine shortly after submitting and publishing analogous articles in [2, 3] Romanian Journal of Biophysics and Acta Dermatovenereologica Alpina, Pannonica et Adriatica. Since the three articles published by the same research group resemble each other in that way that 90–95% of the text is identical, we consider this as triplicate publication. The Editor-in-Chief and the publisher consider this as a serious ethical misconduct and therefore the decision has been made to retract the article published in Clinical and Experimental Medicine.

Dr. D. Tamiolakis acknowledged full responsibility for this unfortunate situation. Prof. N. Papadopoulos, corresponding author of the article, declared himself and other co-authors unaware of the ethical infringement. He anyway agrees with the article retraction, is deeply sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused to the editorial and publishing staff of Clinical and Experimental Medicine and apologizes to the readers.

The online version of the original article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10238-005-0084-1. This article should be considered as retracted.