About the Authors

Ching-Min Tseng

Contributed equally to this work with: Ching-Min Tseng, Yung-Tai Chen

Affiliation Department of Chest Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

Yung-Tai Chen

Contributed equally to this work with: Ching-Min Tseng, Yung-Tai Chen

Affiliations Department of Medicine, Taipei City Hospital Heping Fuyou Branch, Taipei, Taiwan, Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

Shuo-Ming Ou

Affiliation Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

Yi-Han Hsiao

Affiliation Department of Chest Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

Szu-Yuan Li

Affiliations Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, Institute of Clinical of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

Shuu-Jiun Wang

Affiliations Department of Neurology, Neurological Institute, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

Albert C. Yang

Affiliations Department of Psychiatry, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

Tzeng-Ji Chen

Affiliations Department of Family Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

Diahn-Warng Perng

dwperng@vghtpe.gov.tw

Affiliations Department of Chest Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

Competing Interests

Dr. S. J. Wang has served on scientific advisory boards for Pfizer Inc., Allergan, Inc., and Eli Lilly and Company, Taiwan; has received speaker honoraria from GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer Inc., Eli Lilly and Company, Boehringer Ingelheim, Allergan, Inc., and Wyeth. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: C-MT Y-TC S-MO Y-HH S-JW ACY T-JC D-WP. Analyzed the data: C-MT Y-TC S-YL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: S-JW ACY T-JC. Wrote the paper: C-MT Y-TC S-MO Y-HH D-WP.