Ethical approvals, patients rights and informed consent

Patient Rights

Patients have a right to privacy; all studies must be conducted with informed consent. No identifying information should be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent, guardian, or legally authorized representative) provides written informed consent for publication. Where informed consent has been obtained, this should be indicated in the article.

Investigations involving human subjects must follow the ethical principles set out in the Declaration of Helsinki, in its current, most recently revised version, as maintained by the World Medical Association. All experiments must be approved by the institutional human experimentation committee or equivalent.

Note: Please do not submit the patient's actual written informed consent form with your article, as this itself breaches patient confidentiality. Authors should instead include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained, within the manuscript text.

Animal Rights

Animal experiments must follow ethical standards for the care and use of laboratory animals. Articles involving animal experiments must have obtained approval from the appropriate ethics committee in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and CPCSEA guidelines (for research conducted in India). A statement confirming ethics committee approval must be included in all relevant research articles.

Clinical Trial Registry

The journal recommends that clinical trials be registered in a publicly accessible database, with the registration number included in any paper reporting trial results. Authors reporting randomized trials must adhere to the CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) 2010 guideline.