About the Authors

Dan Liu

Contributed equally to this work with: Dan Liu, Kai Hu

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, Comprehensive Heart Failure Center, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Kai Hu

Contributed equally to this work with: Dan Liu, Kai Hu

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, Comprehensive Heart Failure Center, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Stefan Störk

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, Comprehensive Heart Failure Center, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Sebastian Herrmann

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, Comprehensive Heart Failure Center, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Bastian Kramer

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, Comprehensive Heart Failure Center, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Maja Cikes

Affiliation Department for Cardiovascular Diseases, University Hospital Center Zagreb and School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Philipp Daniel Gaudron

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, Comprehensive Heart Failure Center, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Stefan Knop

Affiliation Department of Internal Medicine II, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Georg Ertl

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, Comprehensive Heart Failure Center, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Bart Bijnens

Affiliations ICREA - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, Department of Cardiovascular Diseases, K.U. Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Frank Weidemann

Weidemann_F@ukw.de

Affiliations Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, Comprehensive Heart Failure Center, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: FW BB DL KH. Performed the experiments: DL KH. Analyzed the data: DL KH SS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MC SK PDG BK SH. Wrote the paper: DL KH FW BB SS. Final approval of the version to be published: FW GE.