Owing to an oversight during the proof checking stage, the above article has been published with the incorrect author listed for correspondence. The first author, Chao Huang, is listed as the corresponding author, although he was only intended to have been temporarily assigned to handle queries during the pre-press stages of the publication. The correct corresponding author should have been listed as Professor Bin Wen (also at the Spleen‑Stomach Institute, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510000, P.R. China). The email address for Professor Wen is: wenbin@gzucm.edu.cn. We sincerely apologize for this mistake, and regret any inconvenience this mistake has caused [the original article was published in the Molecular Medicine Reports 14: 2555-2565, 2016; DOI: 10.3892/mmr.2016.5584].