About the Authors

Sanjay Rampal

Contributed equally to this work with: Sanjay Rampal, Sanjiv Mahadeva

Affiliations Julius Centre University of Malaya, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Department of Epidemiology and Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Sanjiv Mahadeva

Contributed equally to this work with: Sanjay Rampal, Sanjiv Mahadeva

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Eliseo Guallar

Affiliations Department of Epidemiology and Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, Area of Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Population Genetics, National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC), Madrid, Spain

Awang Bulgiba

Affiliation Julius Centre University of Malaya, Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Rosmawati Mohamed

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Ramlee Rahmat

Affiliation Ministry of Health, Putrajaya, Malaysia

Mohamad Taha Arif

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Sarawak Malaysia, Sarawak, Malaysia

Lekhraj Rampal

rampal@medic.upm.edu.my

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SR RR MTA LR. Performed the experiments: LR SR RR MTA. Analyzed the data: SR SM EG LR. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: LR. Wrote the paper: SR SM EG AB RM RR MTA LR.