Authors’ contributions
All authors were involved in drafting the manuscript or critical
revisions for important intellectual content and gave final
approval of the version to be published.
Kai M Beeh participated in the design of the study,
provided study-specific exercise, spirometry, and plethysmography
training and certification, and was the lead and
coordinating investigator of the trial. Lilla Di Scala performed
biostatistics calculations.
Anton Drollmann is an employee of the sponsor Novartis
and was involved in designing the study, authoring the
medical aspects of the study protocol, and supervising the
conduct, analysis, and publication of the study medically and
scientifically.
Dave Singh was an investigator during the study
and was involved in recruiting patients and collecting data.