To further clarify the association of HLA DR alleles with type 1 diabetes mellitus and the influence of age-onset and gender on type 1 diabetes, we investigated HLA-DR in 76 child onset Chinese (36 males) type 1 diabetes patients and 154 normal controls by using PCR-SSP (sequence specific primer). The mean age of onset of diabetes patients was 8.43 +/- 3.96 year-old. Our results revealed that the frequencies of DR3, DR4 and DR9 in diabetes patients were significantly higher than those in control group (all P < 0.01). The susceptible alleles were DR3, DR4, DR9, with relative risks of 8.25, 2.57 and 2.67, respectively. The protective alleles to type 1 diabetes were DR 2, DR8, DR11 and DR12 with relative risk of 0.24, 0.15, 0.16 and 0.39, respectively. There were no significant differences between the frequencies of HLA DR 3, DR4, DR9, DR3/4, DR3/9 and DR4/9 in male and female diabetic children. We divided the diabetes patients into three groups according to their age of onset (1-5 years old, 6-10 years old and 11-17 years old). There was a trend that the frequencies of DR9 decreased with the increase of age at onset, but there was no significant difference of DR3, DR4, DR9, DR3/4, DR3/9 and DR4/9 frequencies between diabetes children with age onset 0-10 years and 11-17 years. As to the influence of gender on the HLA genotypes, the frequency of DR3/4 decreased with the increase of age at onset for male patients and the frequency of DR3/4 increased with the increase of age at onset for female patients.