Subsequently to the publication of this article, the authors have realized that the address affiliation for the corresponding author, Chengheng Hu, and the authors Longyun Peng and Xinxue Liao appeared incorrectly. These authors' affiliation information should have appeared as follows (the corrected address affiliation is featured in bold): XIAO KE1,2*, JINGFU CHEN3*, LONGYUN PENG4, WEI ZHANG5, YIYING YANG5, XINXUE LIAO4, LIQIU MO6, RUIXIAN GUO7, JIANQIANG FENG6, CHENGHENG HU4 and RUQIONG NIE2 1Department of Cardiology, Shenzhen Sun Yat‑sen Cardiovascular Hospital, Shenzhen; 2Department of Cardiology, Sun Yat‑sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat‑sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong; 3Department of Cardiovascular Medicine and Dongguan Cardiovascular Institute, The Third People's Hospital of Dongguan City, Dongguan; 4Department of Cardiology and Key Laboratory on Assisted Circulation, Ministry of Health, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat‑sen University; 5Department of Cardiovasology and Cardiac Care Unit (CCU), Huangpu Division of The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat‑sen University; 6Department of Anesthesiology, Huangpu Division of The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat‑sen University; 7Department of Physiology, Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat‑sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, P.R. China *Contributed equally In addition, the address for correspondence in the correspondence box should have appeared as follows: Correspondence to: Professor Chengheng Hu, Department of Cardiology and Key Laboratory on Assisted Circulation, Ministry of Health, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat‑sen University, Guangdong, 58 Zhongshan 2rd Road, Guangzhou 510080, P.R. China E‑mail: huchengheng138@163.com The authors regret this error in the affiliations, and apologize for any inconvenience caused. [the original article was published in the International Journal of Molecular Medicine 39: 1001‑1010, 2017; DOI: 10.3892/ijmm.2017.2891].