About the Authors

Hajime Kanamori

Contributed equally to this work with: Hajime Kanamori, Hisakazu Yano

kanamori@med.tohoku.ac.jp (HK); yanohisa@med.tohoku.ac.jp (HY)

Affiliation Department of Infection Control and Laboratory Diagnostics, Internal Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Hisakazu Yano

Contributed equally to this work with: Hajime Kanamori, Hisakazu Yano

kanamori@med.tohoku.ac.jp (HK); yanohisa@med.tohoku.ac.jp (HY)

Affiliation Department of Clinical Microbiology with Epidemiological Research & Management and Analysis of Infectious Diseases (C-MERMAID), Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Yoichi Hirakata

Affiliation Department of Clinical Microbiology with Epidemiological Research & Management and Analysis of Infectious Diseases (C-MERMAID), Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Ayako Hirotani

Affiliation Department of Infection Control and Laboratory Diagnostics, Internal Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Kazuaki Arai

Affiliation Department of Clinical Microbiology with Epidemiological Research & Management and Analysis of Infectious Diseases (C-MERMAID), Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Shiro Endo

Affiliation Department of Infection Control and Laboratory Diagnostics, Internal Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Sadahiro Ichimura

Affiliation Department of Bacteriology, BML, Inc., Kawagoe, Saitama, Japan

Miho Ogawa

Affiliation Department of Bacteriology, BML, Inc., Kawagoe, Saitama, Japan

Masahiro Shimojima

Affiliation Department of Bacteriology, BML, Inc., Kawagoe, Saitama, Japan

Tetsuji Aoyagi

Affiliation Department of Infection Control and Laboratory Diagnostics, Internal Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Masumitsu Hatta

Affiliation Department of Infection Control and Laboratory Diagnostics, Internal Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Mitsuhiro Yamada

Affiliation Department of Regional Cooperation for Infectious Diseases, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Yoshiaki Gu

Affiliation Department of Regional Cooperation for Infectious Diseases, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Koichi Tokuda

Affiliation Department of Infection Control and Laboratory Diagnostics, Internal Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Hiroyuki Kunishima

Affiliation Department of Regional Cooperation for Infectious Diseases, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Miho Kitagawa

Affiliation Department of Infection Control and Laboratory Diagnostics, Internal Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Mitsuo Kaku

Affiliation Department of Infection Control and Laboratory Diagnostics, Internal Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that Sadahiro Ichimura, Miho Ogawa, and Masahiro Shimojima belong to Department of Bacteriology, BML, Inc., but the affiliation to this company or this study is not related to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development or marketed products. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: H. Kanamori HY YH M. Kaku. Performed the experiments: H. Kanamori HY AH KA SI MO MS. Analyzed the data: H. Kanamori HY SE TA MH MY YG KT H. Kunishima. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: H. Kanamori HY SI MO MS M. Kitagawa. Wrote the paper: H. Kanamori HY.