This article is mentioned in:

Exp Ther Med 16: [Related article:] 436-444, 2018; DOI: 10.3892/etm.2018.6151

Subsequently to the publication of the article, the authors have recognized a need to correct some of its content in order to clarify the accuracy of the article's information.

First, Dr Yongqing Lai should have been included as the joint corresponding author for this paper. Therefore, the information in the correspondence box (also including his email address) should have been as follows (changes are indicated in bold):

Correspondence to: Professor Liangchao Ni and Dr Yongqing Lai, Department of Urology, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, 1120 Lianhua Road, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518036, P.R. China

E-mail: lcnord@163.com

E-mail: yqlord@163.com

Secondly, the authors wished to add two new authors (Canbin Lin and Hang Li) to the paper. Note that all the existing authors agree to the addition of these new authors; therefore, the revised author list is as appears above (with the newly added authors appearing third and fourth in the author list), and the affiliations should have appeared as follows:

YULIN LAI1,2,5*, JING QUAN1,3,5*, CANBIN LIN1,4,5, HANG LI1,5, JIA HU1,2, PEIJIE CHEN1,4,5, JINLING XU1,5, XIN GUAN1,5, WEIJIE XU1,5, YONGQING LAI1,5 and LIANGCHAO NI1,5

1Department of Urology, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518036; 2Graduate School, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 511436; 3Graduate School, Anhui Medical University, Anhui Hefei 230032; 4Graduate School, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, Guangdong 515041; 5The Guangdong and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Male Reproductive Medicine and Genetics, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, Institute of Urology of Shenzhen PKU-HKUST Medical Center, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518036, P.R. China

* Contributed equally

Lastly, the authors inadvertently omitted the reference number for the funding received from the ‘San-ming’ Project of Medicine in Shenzhen: The ref. no. should have appeared as SZSM201612066.

The authors regret that these errors and omissions were not corrected prior to the publication of the paper, and apologize to the readership for the inconvenience caused.