About me

Lars Klareskog (born 1945) is a Swedish physician, immunologist, and rheumatologist, known for research into the genetics of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Klareskog received his medical degree from the University of Uppsala in 1974 and received his doctorate in 1978 with thesis On the structure, function and tissue distribution of HLA-DR and Ia antigens. From 1990 to 1993, he held the chair of clinical immunology at Uppsala University. He then held the chair of rheumatology at the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska Clinic until 2012 and was head of the Rheumatology Clinic and Research Group. Since 2008 he is also director of the Center for Molecular Medicine. In the mid-2000s, he and his research team found that, in patients with recent-onset rheumatoid arthritis (RA), previous smoking was dose-dependently associated with the occurrence of antibodies to the α-amino acid citrulline. The presence of HLA-DR shared epitope (SE) genes was a risk factor for RA with the presence of anticitrulline antibodies but not for RA without the presence of anticitrulline antibodies. For smokers there was a large interaction between smoking and HLA-DR SE genes for anticitrulline-positive RA but not for anticitrulline-negative RA.[1]