The genetic background of rheumatoid arthritis-interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD) has been evaluated in Europeans, but little knowledge has been obtained in non-Europeans. This study aimed to elucidate genome-wide risk of RA-ILD in non-Europeans.
We performed an initial genome-wide association study (GWAS) of RA-ILD in the Japanese population. By conducting the meta-analysis of the three GWAS datasets of the RA cohorts and biobank of Japanese, our study included 358 RA-ILD cases and 4550 RA subjects without ILD. We then conducted the stratified analysis of the effect of the GWAS risk allele in each CT image pattern.
We identified one novel RA-ILD risk locus at 7p21 that satisfied the genome-wide significance threshold (rs12702634 at 
We revealed one novel genetic association with RA-ILD in Japanese. The RA-ILD risk of the identified variant at 