Correction to: Clinical Rheumatology (2019) 38:3609–3617

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-019-04718-8

It has been brought to our attention that there were overlaps between the article recently published in this journal [1] and the previous publications from our group [2,3,4] that we did not cite. We apologize to the readers for omitting the citations; however, the overlaps were reasonable and not all avoidable.

First, the overlaps between these articles were mainly in the methods section, which caused by the fact that these articles were using the same sample, the same design, and the similar outcomes. Moreover, the exposures were all serum cytokines measured by the same methods. Therefore, these overlaps were not all avoidable.

Second, there were a few of overlaps in the result section due to the fixed descriptive sentences (e.g., “were significantly and positively associated with total WOMAC score before and after adjustment for age, sex and BMI”), but the overlaps were not substantial.

Third, there were minor overlaps in the introduction and/or discussion sections. All these articles were about knee osteoarthritis, with similar research background and rationale. Particularly, these articles were focusing on inflammatory factors, which means there would be some shared causal pathways.

Overall, this article reported that serum IL-8 was associated with knee symptoms, joint structures, and cartilage or bone biomarkers in patients with knee osteoarthritis, which were the first study to describe these associations. Some overlaps mainly in the methods section with our previous publications would not affect the novelty and integrity of this publication.