Conflict of Interest Statement
Authors must indicate whether or not they have a financial relationship with the organization that sponsored the research. They should also state that they have full control of all primary data and that they agree to allow the journal to review their data if requested.
Statement of Human and Animal Rights
When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
Statement of Informed Consent and Ethical Approval
Patients have a right to privacy that
should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information,
including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be
published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the
information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or
guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for
this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable is shown the
manuscript to be published. Authors should identify individuals who provide
writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.
Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete
anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be
obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in
photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying
characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees,
authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific
meaning and editors should so note.
