*Department of Surgery, Division of Gastroenterological, Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic, Transplantation and Pediatric Surgery, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto Japan

†Department of Laboratory Medicine, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan

‡Department of Biomedical Laboratory Medicine, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan

This study was approved by the ethics committee of Shinshu University School of Medicine (approval code: 5171). The requirement for informed consent was waived, and an opt-out method was used because of the retrospective study design. The investigation was conducted in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

T.Y. participated in the design of the study, performed the pathology analysis, and drafted the manuscript. T.U. and M.I. helped with the pathology analysis. T.Y. and T.U. performed the statistical analysis. T.N. conducted the immunohistochemistry analysis. A.S., K.K., T.N., N.K., H.M., H.S., H.H., H.T., S.Y., and S.H. acquired the clinical data. T.U., H.O., and Y.S. critically revised the manuscript draft for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final paper.

Availability of data and materials: All data generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (20K07405). This study was partially supported by the Hokuto Foundation for Bioscience (grant awarded to T.U.). These funding bodies had no role in the study design; collection, analysis, or interpretation of data; or manuscript writing.

Conflicts of Interest and Source of Funding: The authors have disclosed that they have no significant relationships with, or financial interest in, any commercial companies pertaining to this article.

Correspondence: Takeshi Uehara, MD, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Shinshu University School of Medicine, 3-1-1 Asahi, Matsumoto 390-8621, Japan (e-mail: [email protected]).