Subsequently to the publication of this article, the authors have noted that the second and third named authors on the paper, Lihua Zeng and Jiahui Chu, were not accredited as being joint first authors on this paper, and equal contributors with Lei Huang. The elimination of the necessary asterisks occurred during the pre‑press stages. Therefore, the correct author affliations for this article should have appeared as follows: Lei Huang1,2*, Lihua Zeng3*, Jiahui Chu1*, Pengfei Xu3, Mingming Lv3, Juan Xu3, Juan Wen3, Wenqu Li3, Luyu Wang4, Xiaowei Wu5, Ziyi Fu3, Hui Xie1 and Shui Wang1. 1Department of Breast Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210029; 2Department of General Surgery, The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210008; 3Nanjing Maternity and Child Health Medical Institute, Affiliated Nanjing Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210004; 4Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215004; 5Department of Pharmacology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210029, P.R. China. *Contributed equally. The Editor apologizes to the authors for this oversight on our part, and for the inconvenience caused. [the original article was published in Molecular Medicine Reports 18: 243‑253, 2018; DOI: 10.3892/mmr.2018.8942].