We investigated the patterns and extent of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the vicinity of the type 2 diabetes gene calapin-10 (CAPN10) in Mexican Americans, European Americans, African Americans, and Chinese Americans. We found that CAPN10 occurs within a single block of high LD and that LD decays rapidly outside of the gene. This reduces the likelihood that associations between CAPN10 polymorphisms and type 2 diabetes could be attributed to variation at some distance from CAPN10. We also consistently observed that cases have more extensive LD than control subjects and that cases from families with evidence for linkage have more extensive LD than cases from families without evidence for linkage. These observations further suggest that there are one or more relatively common alleles increasing risk of type 2 diabetes in this local region.