TY - JOUR T1 - Effect of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) Susceptibility Genes on the Immune Response to Viral Citrullinated Peptides in RA JF - The Journal of Rheumatology JO - J Rheumatol SP - 1490 LP - 1493 DO - 10.3899/jrheum.111548 VL - 39 IS - 7 AU - FEDERICO PRATESI AU - ELISABETH PETIT-TEIXEIRA AU - JOHN SIDNEY AU - VITOR HUGO TEIXEIRA AU - ILARIA PUXEDDU AU - ALESSANDRO SETTE AU - FRANCOIS CORNELIS AU - PAOLA MIGLIORINI Y1 - 2012/07/01 UR - http://www.jrheum.org/content/39/7/1490.abstract N2 - To the Editor:Anticitrullinated peptide/protein antibodies (ACPA) are a family of rheumatoid arthritis (RA)-specific antibodies that recognize various protein sequences containing citrulline, the deiminated form of arginine produced posttranslationally by peptidylarginine deiminase (PAD) enzymes. Recently, viral citrullinated peptides (VCP) derived from Epstein-Barr virus nuclear proteins EBNA-1 and EBNA-2 have been described as a target of ACPA in RA sera1,2.Genetic factors predisposing to RA, namely HLA-DRB1 shared epitope (SE) alleles and PTPN22 gene variants, as well as the TRAF1/C5 locus and PADI4 susceptible haplotype, have been found to be predominantly associated with ACPA-positive RA, even if the association with ACPA-negative RA cannot be excluded.We evaluated the influence of genes conferring susceptibility to RA on the production of anti-VCP antibodies and tested the interaction of VCP with HLA in vitro. We analyzed 172 patients with RA of French white origin3. All provided informed consent and the Ethics Committee of Hôpital Bicêtre (AP-HP, Paris, France) approved the study.HLA-DRB1 typing and subtyping were performed by a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based method, using a panel of sequence-specific oligonucleotide probes. PADI4 haplotypes were obtained by typing 3 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP: rs1886303, PADI4_92, PADI4_96 – CGC haplotype) by PCR-restriction fragment-length polymorphism (RFLP)4. PTPN22 (R620W; rs24766601 – T variant) and C5/TRAF1 region polymorphisms (rs10818488 – A variant) were genotyped by PCR-RFLP5,6. … Address correspondence to Dr. P. Migliorini; E-mail: paola.migliorini{at}med.unipi.it ER -