A commentary notes that despite improvements in diagnostics and therapy over the past few decades, diagnosis of SLE is still associated with significant mortality and severe burden, with belimumab the only new drug licensed during the past 50 years; therefore, any success of a drug in the pipeline raises new hope for patients. It suggests these positive findings indicate that baricitinib could be a favourable drug but questions whether there also a meaningful clinical benefit, noting that the difference in primary outcome was mostly based on a greater reduction in mean tender joint count in the baricitinib 4mg group. It adds that phase II trials should help to define the optimal phase 3 trial for the new drug and from this trial, several conclusions can be drawn for the future. First, in populations of patients with mild to moderate disease activity, only minimal changes can be expected so a higher disease activity is needed to show a clear difference between placebo and treatment. Second, a better control and standardisation of corticosteroids is necessary; in the current study, more than 70% of patients used corticosteroids and 50% were taking at least 7.5 mg prednisone daily. Additionally, more than half of the patients were not taking immunosuppressive medication, but based on current recommendations, most of the trial participants had a clear indication for additional immunosuppression for steroid sparing. Also corticosteroid doses were not to be tapered during the trial, which might have further minimised the measurable difference between standard of care plus placebo compared with standard of care plus baricitinib. Finally, the data indicate a dose-response relationship, but with almost no effect of 2mg, the moderate effect of 4mg and only one disease-specific side-effect, a higher daily dose might be indicated, especially when patients with higher disease activity are included, and presumably even a small reduction of corticosteroids could require higher baricitinib doses to control disease activity.