Statistical analysis
Statistical analyses were performed using R ver. 4.0.2, SPSS ver. 23.0 and GraphPad Prism 8. The sample size was calculated using PASS software, with means and variances set according to our preliminary experimental results. Power was set at 0.8, and significance level at 0.05. All continuous variables were described as the mean ± standard deviation (SD), both at baseline and post-treatment, for each group. Two-way ANOVA was used for analysis. Pearson χ2 tests or Fisher exact tests were used for the analysis of classified data. The nonparametric Mann–Whitney U test was utilized to compare changes in clinical parameters between different treatment groups. Proteomic data acquisition and analysis were described. Protein levels were described as the mean ± standard error of the mean (SEM), and the Student’s paired 