All data were expressed as mean ± SEM. Biomarker levels were treated as normally distributed continuous variables. For statistical analyses, Student’s t test was used for continuous variables and χ2 test was used for categorical predictor variables. The nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test was used for continuous variables that were not normally distributed. Serial comparisons ( time × treatment ) of biomarkers between treatment groups and control group were made using repeated measures ANOVA with post-hoc Bonferroni/ Dunn testing. All analyses were two-tailed and p -values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant.