In addition, genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) have identified PRDM1 as a susceptibility gene for the autoimmune diseases systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), as two informative single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been specifically mapped in the intergenic region between the PRDM1 and ATG5 loci in SLE and RA patients (Gateva et al, 2009; Raychaudhuri et al, 2009; Zhou et al, 2011; Appendix Fig S1A). This evidence concerns the gene PRDM1 and autoimmune disease.