Footnotes

• Funding: The study was supported by grants from the National Taiwan University Hospital; the National Science Council, and Department of Health, Executive Yuan, Taiwan.

• Competing interests: Pei-Jer Chen is a consultant for Norvartis and Roche. Ding-Shinn Chen is a consultant for Norvartis and GlaxoSmithKline. Jia-Horng Kao has received recent research funding for Vitagenomics; is a consultant for Bristol–Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Norvartis, Omrix, Roche, and Schering-Plough; and on the speaker’s bureau for Roche, Bristol–Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Norvartis and Schering–Plough. All other authors have no competing interests.

• Ethics approval: This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee, National Taiwan University Hospital, on 13 April 2006