About the Authors

Zhide Fang

Affiliation Biostatistics Program, School of Public Health, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America

Ruofei Du

Affiliation Biostatistics Program, School of Public Health, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America

Xiangqin Cui

xcui@ms.soph.uab.edu

Affiliation Department of Biostatistics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: ZF XC. Performed the experiments: ZF RD. Analyzed the data: ZF RD. Wrote the paper: ZF XC.