Background: Multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN 1) is a tumour predisposition syndrome that usually manifests in the first four decades of life. It: has an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance which means that any new member of a MEN1 kindred has roughly a 50% chance of developing the disorder during their lifetime. The localisation of the MEN1 gene to a small region of chromosome band 11q13 has led to the development of DNA-based predictive diagnosis for this disease