A candidate gene study identifies a haplotype of CD2 as novel susceptibility factor for systemic sclerosis

摘要

Objective. Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a rare autoimmune disease (AID) with a complex genetic aetiology. Evidence for a shared pathogenesis across AIDs is given by the well-known pleiotropism of autoimmune genes. Recently, several unbiased approaches have identified an association between polymorphisms of the CD2 gene, and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) susceptibility. The objective of this study was to investigate whether CD2 polymorphisms are associated with SSc.