About the Authors

Catherine A. Panozzo

Current address: Global Pharmacovigilance, Sanofi Pasteur, Swiftwater, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

Sylvia Becker-Dreps

Affiliation Department of Family Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

Virginia Pate

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

Michele Jonsson Funk

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

Til Stürmer

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

David J. Weber

Affiliations Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America, Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

M. Alan Brookhart

mabrook@email.unc.edu

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America

Competing Interests

Ms. Panozzo now works at Sanofi Pasteur. Dr. Becker-Dreps received investigator-initiated research grant funding from Merck, Inc. Dr. Stürmer does not accept personal compensation of any kind from any pharmaceutical company, though he and Ms. Pate receive salary support from the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and from unrestricted research grants from pharmaceutical companies (GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Sanofi) to the Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Weber consults and is on the speaker's bureau for Merck and Pfizer. Dr. Brookhart serves as an unpaid scientific advisor for Amgen, Merck, Rockwell Medical, and Pfizer (honoraria declined, paid to institution, or donated). 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: CAP SBD DJW MAB. Performed the experiments: CAP VP. Analyzed the data: CAP MJF TS MAB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: VP. Wrote the paper: CAP. Obtained dataset: MAB. Managed data: VP.