Interestingly, Cunninghame Graham et al. have shown that although the 3′ flanking region of CTLA4 is an important region for association to both SLE and Graves' disease, the pattern of association to SLE is distinct from that seen in Graves' disease and the variants contributing to the association in SLE are more distal to CTLA4 than those in Graves' disease [23]. Here, CTLA4 is linked to systemic lupus erythematosus.