We have performed intrafamilial and case-control association studies to examine the previously reported linkage disequilibrium between D2S152 and a type 1 diabetes susceptibility gene on chromosome 2q31-q33 (IDDM7). Significant linkage disequilibrium was observed in our subset of 47 Florida affected sibpair families (p < 0.02) but not in the other 57 USA families. We were not able to detect any significant associations between IDDM and D2S152 using case-control studies in a Caucasian data set of 270 unrelated diabetic patients and 370 normal controls ascertained from Florida, or in a Chinese data set of 90 patients and 169 normal controls. Our results suggest that linkage disequilibrium between IDDM7 and D2S152 must be very loose.