About the Authors

Sergio Harari

Contributed equally to this work with: Sergio Harari, Fabiana Madotto

sharari@hotmail.it

Affiliation Unità Operativa, di Pneumologia e Terapia Semi-Intensiva Respiratoria, Servizio di Fisiopatologia Respiratoria ed Emodinamica Polmonare, Ospedale San Giuseppe-MultiMedica IRCCS, Milan, Italy

Fabiana Madotto

Contributed equally to this work with: Sergio Harari, Fabiana Madotto

Affiliation Research Centre on Public Health, Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

Antonella Caminati

Affiliation Unità Operativa, di Pneumologia e Terapia Semi-Intensiva Respiratoria, Servizio di Fisiopatologia Respiratoria ed Emodinamica Polmonare, Ospedale San Giuseppe-MultiMedica IRCCS, Milan, Italy

Sara Conti

Affiliation Research Centre on Public Health, Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

Giancarlo Cesana

Affiliation Research Centre on Public Health, Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

Competing Interests

Outside the submitted work, Dr. Harari reports personal fees from InterMune s.r.l, Roche, Boehringer Ingelheim and Dr. Caminati from InterMune s.r.l., Roche and Boehringer Ingelheim Italia s.p.a. The Research Center on Public Health received a grant from InterMune s.r.l. for taking part in the project that originated this publication, but no personal fees were received by Dr. Cesana, Madotto and Conti.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SH FM AC SC. Analyzed the data: FM SC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SH GC. Wrote the paper: SH FM AC SC GC. Guarantor of the content of the manuscript: SH.