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Comment & Response
July 2016

Errors in Identification of 17 of 527 Brain Images in Genetic Study of Phenotypes Associated With Bipolar Disorder

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles
  • 2Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
  • 3Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles
JAMA Psychiatry. 2016;73(7):758-759. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.1051

To the Editor In the article titled “Multisystem Component Phenotypes of Bipolar Disorder for Genetic Investigations of Extended Pedigrees,”1 published online in JAMA Psychiatry on February 12, 2014, and in the April 2014 issue of the journal, results for the heritability and bipolar I disorder (BP-I) association analysis were reported for neuroimaging phenotypes acquired from a sample of 527 individuals from families with heavy genetic loading for BP-I. After publication, we discovered that 17 brain images had been assigned incorrect identifications. During ongoing analysis of the phenotype data acquired in this study, it was discovered that 2 magnetic resonance images of the brains from 1 of the 2 data acquisition sites (Colombia) were duplicated and assigned to more than 1 individual. This error affected 3 of the 527 images. Based on this discovery, we conducted a comprehensive review of all imaging data, in which we found that at the time of acquisition 14 images had been assigned to incorrect individuals. Thus, in total, 17 of 527 magnetic resonance images were affected by the errors.

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