Acknowledgements
The authors thank Heather Wells for her assistance with processing and analysis of sputum samples. We also thank Jihong Wu for her assistance with gamma scintigraphy procedures related to the study.
Ethics approval and consent to participate
The University of North Carolina Institutional Review Board Biomedical Committee approved the study (#15-1938). Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. This study was registered on clinicaltrials.gov under identifier NCT02911688.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data availability statement
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.