Author reply

We thank Drs Huisingh and McGwin for their interest in our paper and their general comments on our statistical analysis. Because our study participants were selected based on their disease status, case-control study may more appropriately describe our study design than cross-sectional, case-control clinical trial as described in our paper. Concerning another lexical issue, our control group was selected to ensure that factors such as age and gender would not affect our results. We used the term “matched” in our paper to imply that there were no confounding factors between the groups among the parameters measured, such as age and gender, except for disease status, which could lead to confusion. It would be better to state that “there was no statistical difference in age, gender, and other characteristics between the 2 groups” rather than “age- and gender-matched groups.” The expression “in vivo mouse experimental study,” the description used for our animal studies, has been utilized in many other papers instead of “clinical trial mouse model”; thus, we believe that the expression in vivo study design is more appropriate and will facilitate the understanding of the study for readers.