Kronzer VL, Huang W, Dellaripa PF, et al. - Researchers undertook this nested case-control analysis to examine the link between novel lifestyle factors on risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA)-associated interstitial lung disease (ILD), to unveil the threshold at which smoking raises the risk of RA-ILD, as well as to compute the degree to which recognized lifestyle and clinical factors predict RA-ILD. Based on age, gender, RA duration, rheumatoid factor, and time from exposure assessment to RA-ILD, experts matched incident RA-ILD cases to RA non-ILD controls. They found 84 incident RA-ILD cases as well as 233 matched controls. Relative to never smokers, smoking 30 pack-years or more was identified to be strongly related to risk of RA-ILD. In combination, lifestyle and clinical risk factors for RA-ILD were found to have an AUC of 0.79. As revealed in this study, risk for RA-ILD development may be conferred by factors such as obesity, C-reactive protein, functional status, and extensive smoking. These novel risk factors may be beneficial for RA-ILD risk evaluation as well as prophylaxis. A modest overall ability to predict RA-ILD was shown.