Authors must declare at submission that all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, all necessary ethics committee approvals have been obtained, all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms archived. Any clinical trials described should be registered with an internationally recognized trial registry and the trial ID included in the manuscript. The ethical standards of experiments must conform to the guiding principles of the Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association concerning the ethics of medical research in animal experiments and human research.

Authors must include a competing interest statement including explicit acknowledgment of whether the authors or their institutions received any payments or services in the past 36 months from a third party that could be perceived to influence, or give the appearance of potentially influencing, the submitted work.