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Nature Genetics 40, 131–132 (1 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/ng0208-131

The developing mosaic of autoimmune disease risk

Lisa M Maier & David A Hafler

The discovery of new risk variants for systemic lupus erythematosis (SLE), particularly around lymphocyte signaling pathways and integrins involved in clearing complement, provides fresh insights into this common human autoimmune disease. Understanding the role of the variants in disease pathophysiology and translating these findings into new therapies present major and urgent challenges to medical scientists. The results of three large genetic association studies reported in this issue, and one published in the New England Journal of Medicine, add to the ever-increasing number of confirmed loci contributing to SLE, a systemic autoimmune disease that results from complex interactions of many genes and environmental factors and that often shows clinical overlap with other autoimmune disorders (Fig. 1).