Patients with and without autoantibodies differ with regard to risk factors for developing disease: the vast majority of genetic risk factors predispose to ACPA-positive RA, such as the HLA-DRB1 shared epitope alleles (SE) and Protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor type 22 (PTPN22)-variants [3, 4]. Here, HLA-DRB1 is linked to rheumatoid arthritis.