Genetic risk factors play an important role in autoimmune disease susceptibility. Recent advances in genotyping techniques, statistical methods, and the organization of large patient cohorts have facilitated explosive progress in this field, and our understanding of the genetic architecture of human autoimmunity is rapidly expanding. Knowledge of the genetic basis of disease provides us with a unique window into human pathophysiology, which will facilitate improved diagnostic and therapeutic strategies and enable personalized medicine.

We invite authors to submit original research articles about diverse autoimmune diseases which will advance our knowledge in this important group of conditions. Additionally, we encourage review articles that provide a timely and meaningful synthesis of current data in this fast-moving field. In particular, we are interested in papers describing novel genetic associations with autoimmune disease, genetic factors which predict disease outcome, or disease phenotype and papers which characterize the molecular or biological function of a known autoimmune disease risk variant. Additional areas of particular interest are pharmacogenetics and studies which include underrepresented populations. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Case-control genetic association in autoimmune diseases
• Physical or molecular subphenotype studies
• Functional characterization of known autoimmune disease risk loci
• Fine mapping of autoimmune risk loci
• Genetic association in underrepresented ancestral backgrounds
• Familial autoimmunity
• Shared and disparate genetic factors between autoimmune diseases
• Pharmacogenetics related to autoimmunity

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jir/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: