Statistical analysis
In this study, data were statistically analyzed using SPSS v20.0 software (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY, USA) and visualized using GraphPad Prism 7 (GraphPad Software Inc., La Jolla, CA, USA). The demographic and health status information at baseline was summarized using Means (Standard Deviation, SD) for continuous variables and Frequencies (Percentages) for categorical variables. Data were first examined for normality by the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test and, the data that achieved normality were analyzed using parametric methods while the others used non-parametric methods. Differences in continuous variables between groups were tested by t-test or MannWhitney U test, while differences in categorical variables were tested by Chi-squared tests or Fisher’s exact tests. In our trial, Unpaired t-test was applied to test UWS, SWS, LF, ESSDAI and ESSPRI, immunological indexes to determine significant difference between baseline and follow-up. Paired t-test was used to analyze significant differences of intergroup at each data point. All reported p-values were from two-side tests and compared with a significance level of 0.05 (