I personally believe the infectious cause theory is a real possibility. Dr. Trentham was pursuing this with RA, Sjogren’s, and schelroderma. Years ago he had good results, but I don’t know if he ever did a large enough study for it to be considered acceptable by the larger medical community. He is in Boston. Generally, I am pretty sure the medical establishment still resists most explanations of infectious causes for autoimmune disease in my observations, but just remember Lymes disease was thought to be autoimmune, mostly arthritic symptoms, and rheumatic heart, and ulcers. I’m not saying go out and try a bunch of antibiotics, but when you are on them for other reasons, I would try to pay attention to if your RA symptoms improve for that time period.