Associations of autoantibodies, autoimmune risk alleles, and clinical diagnoses from the electronic medical records in rheumatoid arthritis cases and non–rheumatoid arthritis controls

Abstract

The increased frequency of autoantibodies in RA cases and non-RA controls was associated with the number of autoimmune risk alleles carried by an individual. PheWAS of EMR data, with linkage to laboratory data obtained from blood samples, provide a novel method to test for the clinical significance of biomarkers in disease.