We chose to focus on rheumatoid arthritis (RA), as IL-7R-positive lymphocytes have been implicated in the pathogenesis of this disease26, 37, 38, and verified that IL-7R was highly expressed in the inflammation sites of RA patients by analyzing clinical data from a public database (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE1919, GSE55457, Supplementary Fig. 3). Here, IL7R is linked to rheumatoid arthritis.