About the Authors

Wei-jie Guan

Contributed equally to this work with: Wei-jie Guan, Yong-hua Gao, Gang Xu

Affiliation State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Yong-hua Gao

Contributed equally to this work with: Wei-jie Guan, Yong-hua Gao, Gang Xu

Affiliation Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China

Gang Xu

Contributed equally to this work with: Wei-jie Guan, Yong-hua Gao, Gang Xu

Affiliation Guangzhou First People's Hospital, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Zhi-ya Lin

Affiliation State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Yan Tang

Affiliation State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Hui-min Li

Affiliation State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Zhi-min Lin

Affiliation State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Jin-ping Zheng

Affiliation State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Rong-chang Chen

nanshan@vip.163.com (NSZ); chenrc@vip.163.com (RCC)

Affiliation State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Nan-shan Zhong

nanshan@vip.163.com (NSZ); chenrc@vip.163.com (RCC)

Affiliation State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

Competing Interests

Profs. Zhong and Chen declare that they have received Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University ITR0961, The National Key Technology R&D Program of the 12th National Five-year Development Plan 2012BAI05B01 and National Key Scientific & Technology Support Program: Collaborative innovation of Clinical Research for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer No. 2013BAI09B09. All other authors declared no potential conflict of interest. None of the funding sources had any role in the study. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: WJG YHG GX RCC NSZ. Performed the experiments: WJG YHG GX HML ZYL YT JPZ. Analyzed the data: WJG YHG GX. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: WJG YHG GX HML ZYL ZML. Wrote the paper: WJG YHG GX. Provided critical review of the manuscript: RCC NSZ. Approved the final submission: RCC NSZ.