About the Authors

Ling Lu

Contributed equally to this work with: Ling Lu, Yanhong Dai

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China

Yanhong Dai

Contributed equally to this work with: Ling Lu, Yanhong Dai

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China

Xiaoping Du

Affiliation Hough Ear Institute, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States of America

Wandong She

shewandong@163.com

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China

Xiuling Zhang

Affiliation Jiangyin People's Hospital, Southeast University Medical College, Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, China

Qin Wu

Affiliation Microbiology Laboratory, Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China

Wenjie Yuan

Affiliation Microbiology Laboratory, Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China

Feng Chen

Affiliation Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: WS LL YD. Performed the experiments: LL XZ QW WY. Analyzed the data: LL YD XD WS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: XD QW WY. Wrote the paper: LL YD WS XD WY FC.