Objective The shared epitope hypothesis was formulated to explain the involvement of HLA–DRB1
in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, several studies, which considered only the HLA…

Background Large-scale gene expression profiling of peripheral blood mononuclear cells
from Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients could provide a molecular description that reflects the …

Vitamin D is a potent regulator of calcium homeostasis and may have immunomodulatory
effects. The influence of vitamin D on human autoimmune disease is controversial. The aim of …

Dupuytren's disease (DD) is a progressive fibrosis of the palmar fascia characterized by the
formation of a nodule, which evolves into a cord. DD is the most common hereditary disease …

Background: Autoantibodies to citrullinated proteins (ACPA) are considered a specific marker
for rheumatoid arthritis. Peptidylarginine deiminase (PAD) is the enzyme that converts …

The tyrosine phosphatase PTPN22 allele 1858T has been associated with rheumatoid
arthritis (RA) and other autoimmune diseases. RA is the most frequent of those multifactorial …

The objective of the study was to investigate the association of caspase activating and
recruitment domain 8 (CARD8) and nucleotide‐binding oligomerization domain, leucine‐rich …

Autoantibody production is genetically controlled and anti-citrullinated protein/peptide
antibodies (ACPA) are not an exception to the rule. ACPA are highly specific markers of …

Recently, we proposed a classification of HLA-DRB1 alleles that reshapes the shared epitope
hypothesis in rheumatoid arthritis (RA); according to this model, RA is associated with the …

Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate the association between genes (HLA-DRB1
and PTPN22) and tobacco smoking, separately as well as combined, and …