BIRC5 and rheumatoid arthritis: Survivin is an apoptotic pathway inhibitor and its increased expression in RBCs from patients with early-standing RA could indicate that, similarly to what has been reported for fibroblast-like lymphocytes and synoviocytes in the joints of RA patients (Zafari et al., 2019), RBCs from RA at this stage of the disease also survive for a long time as a consequence of the impaired apoptosis.