Statistical analysis

The data were analyzed using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences v23. Compliance with the normal distribution was examined using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The independent t-test was performed to compare two normally distributed quantitative variables, and the Mann-Whitney U test was used for non-normally distributed data. One-way analysis of variance was used for the comparison of normally distributed quantitative data from more than two groups. In contrast, the Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare non-normally distributed quantitative data. A paired two-sample t-test was used to compare two normally distributed timepoint datasets, and the Wilcoxon test was used to compare non-normally distributed data. Data were considered significant when p < 0.05.
