About the Authors

Amitesh Agarwal

anagarwa@utmb.edu

Affiliation Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston, TX, United States of America

Wei Zhang

Affiliation Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston, TX, United States of America

YongFang Kuo

Affiliations Office of Biostatistics, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston, TX, United States of America, Sealy Center of Aging, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston, TX, United States of America

Gulshan Sharma

Affiliations Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston, TX, United States of America, Sealy Center of Aging, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston, TX, United States of America

Competing Interests

Dr. Gulshan Sharma serves on the advisory board of Sunovion Pharmaceuticals. The remaining authors have no potential conflicts of interest related to the content of manuscript. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: AA GS. Performed the experiments: AA. Analyzed the data: AA WZ YFK GS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AA WZ YFK GS. Wrote the paper: AA WZ YFK GS.