IFIH1 and autoimmune disease: IFIH1 is the gene that encodes MDA5, and a common coding-change polymorphism in the IFIH1 gene has been associated with risk of SLE and other autoimmune diseases in humans (Smyth et al., 2006; Sutherland et al., 2007; Harley et al., 2008; Gateva et al., 2009; Strange et al., 2010; Molineros et al., 2013).