IL6 and rheumatoid arthritis: Increased levels of sIL-6R may act as a counter-balance to limit exaggerated IL-6 signaling and may explain the protective effect of the 358A allele for various cardiovascular diseases including coronary artery disease (CAD) (51–53), atrial fibrillation (54), lung function in asthmatics (55) and abdominal aortic aneurysm (56) as well as RA (57).