About the Authors

Xuebing Feng

Contributed equally to this work with: Xuebing Feng, Dandan Wang

fengxuebing@hotmail.com (XF); lingyunsun2001@yahoo.com.cn (LS)

Affiliation Department of Rheumatology, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Dandan Wang

Contributed equally to this work with: Xuebing Feng, Dandan Wang

Affiliation Department of Rheumatology, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Jingjing Chen

Affiliation Department of Rheumatology, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Lin Lu

Affiliation Department of Rheumatology, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Bingzhu Hua

Affiliation Department of Rheumatology, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Xia Li

Affiliation Department of Rheumatology, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Betty P. Tsao

Affiliation Division of Rheumatology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Lingyun Sun

fengxuebing@hotmail.com (XF); lingyunsun2001@yahoo.com.cn (LS)

Affiliation Department of Rheumatology, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: XF BT. Performed the experiments: DW JC LL. Analyzed the data: XF DW BH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: XL. Wrote the paper: XF BT. Final approval of the article: LS.