Although in consistent with the role of PTPN11 in thyroid function, cancer and autoimmunity [24–26], these variants are instead described as eQTLs with TMEM116, ALDH2 and MAPKAPK5-AS1 located up to 500kb upstream of PTPN11, suggesting that the associations observed with rs11066309, rs3741983 and rs11066322 could potentially also arise from associations with these other genes. This evidence concerns the gene MAPKAPK5 and Autoimmunity.