About the Authors

Li-Fu Li

Affiliations Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Bao-Xiang Chen

Affiliations Graduate Institute of Clinical Medical Science, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, Department of Respiratory Care, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, Section of Respiratory Care, Department of Integrated Diagno-Therapeutics, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

Ying-Huang Tsai

Affiliations Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, Department of Respiratory Care, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Winston W.-Y. Kao

Affiliation Crawley Vision Research Center/Department of Ophthalmology, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America

Cheng-Ta Yang

Contributed equally to this work with: Cheng-Ta Yang, Pao-Hsien Chu

yang1946@adm.cgmh.org.tw (C-TY); pchu@adm.cgmh.org.tw (P-HC)

Affiliations Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Pao-Hsien Chu

Contributed equally to this work with: Cheng-Ta Yang, Pao-Hsien Chu

yang1946@adm.cgmh.org.tw (C-TY); pchu@adm.cgmh.org.tw (P-HC)

Affiliations Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, The First Cardiovascular Division, Department of Internal Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: P-HC WW-YK. Performed the experiments: L-FL B-XC. Analyzed the data: L-FL B-XC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: Y-HT C-TY. Wrote the paper: L-FL C-TY P-HC.