Corrigendum to “Effects of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Field (RF-EMF) exposure on pregnancy and birth outcomes: A systematic review of experimental studies on non-human mammals” [Environ. Inter. 180 (2023) 108178]

The authors of the article with the title “Effects of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Field (RF-EMF) exposure on pregnancy and birth outcomes: A systematic review of experimental studies on non-human mammals” regret to report a few inconsistencies detected in the article after its publication, due to errors inadvertently occurred in the extraction of the original data. We stress that none of these issues has produced any significant change in the quantitative outputs of the effects estimates or in the interpretation and conclusions of the systematic review. The errors concerned 2 of the included papers, namely Sharma et al. 2017 and Sangun et al. 2015. In the Sharma et al. 2017 paper, each of the exposed group of animals was matched to its own untreated comparator group, while we erroneously matched the same comparator group to both the exposed groups. In relation to the Sangun et al. 2015 paper we inverted the results of the comparator and the exposed groups. The errors in the extraction of the Sangun et al. 2015 and Sharma et al. 2017 data led to miscalculations in the meta-analyses of “fetal weight” results. The errors in the extraction of Sharma et al. 2017 data led also to miscalculations in the meta-analyses of “litter size” and “fetal length” results. The correction of these errors resulted in the following changes: Litter size Two effect size measures from the Sharma et al. 2017 paper were included instead of one. The corrected forest plot and its recalculated pooled effect size are shown in the revised Figure 4. The same correction led to changes in the subgrouping forest plots and in the funnel plot. The corrected plots are shown in the Supplementary Files 1 and 2 to this corrigendum.[Figure presented] Fetal weight Two effect size measures from the Sharma et al. 2017 paper were included instead of one and the effect size for the Sangun et al. 2015 paper was recalculated after swapping the comparator and exposed results. The corrected forest plot and its recalculated pooled effect size are shown in the revised Figure 6. The same corrections led to changes in the subgrouping forest plots and in the funnel plot, which are now shown in the Supplementary Files 1 and 2 to this corrigendum. A further error was noted for this endpoint regarding the selection of studies for the subgrouping by species that erroneously included some of the “high concern” studies. Also this error has been corrected in the Supplementary File 1 to this corrigendum.[Figure presented] Fetal length Two effect size measures from the Sharma et al. 2017 paper were included instead of one. The corrected forest plot and its recalculated pooled effect size are shown in the revised Figure 7. The same correction led to changes in the subgrouping forest plots and in the funnel plot, which are now shown in the Supplementary Files 1 and 2 to this corrigendum.[Figure presented] As a consequence of the corrections, some of the values reported in the summary tables 4 and 5 changed. The corrected values are now reported in the revised versions of these tables (Revised Table 4 and 5). The corrected values are now also reported in a revised version of the original Supplementary File 7 showing the extracted information from all the studies, which is now included as Supplementary File 3 to this corrigendum. The corrections generated some inconsistencies between the text and the corrected figures and tables. Wherever these results are reported in the text of the paper please note that: 1. For litter size, the “low and some concern” pooled MD of 0.05, 95 %CI -0.21 to 0.3 (24 studies) has been corrected into 0.03, 95 %CI -0.16 to 0.22 (25 studies).2. For fetal weight, the “low and some concern” pooled SMD of 0.31, 95 %CI 0.15 to 0.48 (48 studies) has been corrected into 0.35, 95 %CI 0.17 to 0.53 (49 studies) and the “high concern” pooled SMD of 0.52, 95 %CI 0.06 to 0.98 (14 studies) has been corrected into 0.61, 95 %CI 0.16 to 1.06 (14 studies). In addition, the corrected pooled SMD of the 3 SAR subgroups are 0.21, 95 %CI -0.09 to 0.51 (18 studies), -0.57, 95 %CI -1.38 to 0.24 (5 studies) and 0.51, 95 %CI 0.31 to 0.72 (26 studies), for low, medium and high SAR, respectively.3. For fetal length, the “low and some concern” pooled SMD of 0.45, 95 %CI 0.07 to 0.83 (13 studies) has been corrected into 0.45, 95 %CI 0.08 to 0.83 (14 studies). In addition, the corrected pooled SMD of the 3 SAR subgroups are -0.58, 95 %CI -2.40 to 1.24 (3 studies), 0.08, 95 %CI -0.23 to 0.39 (6 studies) and 0.92, 95 %CI 0.47 to 1.37 (5 studies), for low, medium and high SAR, respectively.As can be seen, the corrections led to small changes that did not impact on the GRADE assessment profile. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.

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