Population studies have suggested an increased frequency of small DNA insertions (class I alleles) 5' to the insulin gene in insulin dependent (type I) diabetes mellitus (IDDM). The present study examined this relationship within families. Forty-one families with at least one diabetic offspring were studied. Analysis of the insulin gene polymorphism was performed by digestion of DNA with Bg1I, SstI, RsaI, or PvuII and hybridisation with an insulin gene probe or polymorphic region specific probes. An increased frequency of class I alleles was found among the parents of diabetics (p = 0.02), as well as a trend towards increased frequency of parents homozygous for class I alleles and matings of two homozygous subjects. This increased homozygosity for class I alleles was present in non-diabetic sibs as well (p = 0.01). These results show that ascertainment through an offspring with IDDM selects for families with high frequencies of homozygosity for the class I allele and thus suggests that the insulin gene polymorphism is indeed providing part of the genetic predisposition to IDDM. When the major portion of genetic predisposition is provided by other genes (estimates are that HLA accounts for 30 to 70% in IDDM), identification of additional susceptibility genes becomes difficult. Even when formal linkage analysis is uninformative, our studies indicate that analysis for aggregation of specific alleles within families is a useful approach to this problem.