A report published by Ishigaki et al in Nature Genetics on a large-scale genome-wide association study including over 276,000 samples has identified 124 loci—34 of which are novel—that may be linked to the development of rheumatoid arthritis. In the multiancestry study, 65% of the participants were non-European (including East Asian, African, South Asian, and Arab participants)—a break from past genome-wide association studies in rheumatoid arthritis, which mostly focused on patients with a European background. Lastly, the researchers added that polygenic risk scores for rheumatoid arthritis were more accurate when they added multiancestry genetic data vs single-ancestry data.
May 25, 2023