Murata O, Suzuki K, Sugiura H, et al. - This study was intended to clarify the presence of radiographic thymus variants using a scoring system, and their relationship with clinical and immunological features in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Researchers randomly selected a total of 387 RA patients from all patients visiting our department who had undergone chest CT scanning, with the exclusion of patients with thymoma or thymic cyst, or age < 30 y. They further evaluated thymus size and attenuation score in axial CT images. They examined the correlations between immunophenotype data and clinical and serological features in a subset of patients. It was shown that in RA patients, radiographic thymus variants were frequently found, and may reflect an abnormal immune response involved in the pathogenesis of RA.