Association of common polymorphisms in known susceptibility genes with rheumatoid arthritis in a Slovak population using osteoarthritis patients as controls

Introduction  

Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a common and complex autoimmune disease. As well as the major susceptibility gene HLA-DRB1, recent genome-wide and candidate-gene studies reported additional evidence for association of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in the PTPN22, STAT4, OLIG3/TNFAIP3 and TRAF1/C5 loci with RA. This study was initiated to investigate the association between defined genetic markers and RA in a Slovak population. In contrast to recent studies, we included intensively-characterized osteoarthritis (OA) patients as controls.