SLE Case-Control Study Cohorts used in the study.

Each of the seven groups of samples included in this manuscript was independent from each other. In the UK population, direct genotyping was carried out on 905 UK casesa and samples from the British Birth Control Cohorta (B58BCC). A total of 905 UK SLE cases were typed and for the analysis, 35 cases were removed following QC. Genotypes from the WTCCC2b were used as out-of-study controls. The published data used for the meta-analysis described in this current manuscript was derived from US and Swedish samples. The US cohortc consisted of samples included in a GWAS and additional non-GWAS'd samples used just for the replication study, as described by Gateva et al. (2009) [4]. Full details of the Swedish (SWE)b replication samples are also described in Gateva et al. (2009) [4].