About the Authors

Roy Altman

Affiliation Department of Rheumatology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Sooyeol Lim

Affiliation North American Business Unit, Seikagaku Corporation, Tokyo, Japan

R. Grant Steen

Grant.Steen@bioventusglobal.com

Affiliation Department of Medical Affairs, Bioventus LLC, Durham, NC, United States of America

Vinod Dasa

Affiliation Department of Orthopaedics, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America

Competing Interests

This study was sponsored by Seikagaku Corporation of Tokyo, Japan. Mr. Lim is an employee of Seikagaku Corporation of Tokyo, Japan, and is an inventor and patent holder for a hyaluronic acid product (Patent title: Pharmaceutical composition for relieving pain; Patent number: US 8828969 B2). Dr. Steen is an employee of Bioventus LLC of Durham, North Carolina. Dr. Altman has been a consultant to Bioventus LLC for several years. Dr. Dasa has been a consultant for and is on the Speaker Board of Bioventus LLC. There are no further patents, products in development, or marketed products to declare. None of the authors has any other undescribed financial interests (stock ownership, patent applications, patent registrations, and research grants (or other funding) related to the work described. Seikagaku Corporation and Bioventus LLC did not play a role in study design, data collection, data analysis, or preparation of the manuscript; rather the companies paid salaries for Mr. Lim and Dr Steen, and this relationship has been made explicit by the involvement of Mr. Lim and Dr. Steen in all of the roles associated with authorship. 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: RA SL RGS VD. Performed the experiments: RA SL RGS VD. Analyzed the data: RA SL RGS VD. Wrote the paper: RA SL RGS VD.