The 31-cM Region of Chromosome 11 Including the Obesity Gene Tubby and ATP-Sensitive Potassium Channel Genes, SUR1 and Kir6.2, Does Not Contain a Major Susceptibility Locus for NIDDM in 127 Non-Hispanic White Affected Sibships

L ate-onset NIDDM is apolygenic disorder with both genes and environmental factors contributing to susceptibility (1). Various genetic strategies are being used to identify NIDDM susceptibility genes, including linkage studies using large groups of affected sib pairs and association studies with well-matched groups of affected and unaffected subjects. Risch and Merikangas (2) have recently reviewed the merits of these two approaches and they note that affected-sib pair linkage analysis has good power to find genes with major effects but only limited power to detect genes of modest effect.