The 6,800 affected individuals were recruited as part of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation/Wellcome Trust (JDRF/WT) Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory's JDRF/WT British case collection (Genetic Resource Investigating Diabetes), which is a joint project between the University of Cambridge Departments of Paediatrics at the Addenbrooke's Hospital and Medical Genetics at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. Most affected individuals were <16 years of age at the time of collection; all were under age 17 years at diagnosis and all resided in Great Britain. The 7,000 control samples were obtained from the British 1958 Birth Cohort (B58C), an ongoing study of all people born in Great Britain during one week in 1958 (see URL below). All cases and control were of self-reported white ethnicity, with the exception of 18 cases for whom the WTCCC study found genotype evidence for non-white ethnic group status1.
