According to month of diagnosis, 165 children who developed Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus at the age of 0-16.2 years (mean +/- SD, 7.6 +/- 4.1 years) could be divided into 69 patients diagnosed during peak seasons (epidemic cases) and 96 patients diagnosed during months of low incidence (non-epidemic cases). Seasonality of onset of symptoms and of diagnosis was observed in both sexes in all age groups. The patients diagnosed during peak seasons had shorter duration of symptoms (13.2 +/- 8.1 days) as compared to 22.9 +/- 10.3 days; p less than 0.001 in the patients diagnosed during months of low incidence. At diagnosis, 88.4% (61/69) of the epidemic group had ketonuria as compared to 71.9% (69/96); p less than 0.06 in the non-epidemic patients. The values of C-peptide, insulin antibodies, haemoglobin A1c and HLA-DR phenotype frequencies in the 69 epidemic patients were compared with those of the 96 non-epidemic patients. In the epidemic patients, the C-peptide values of 0.11 +/- 0.05 mmol/l at diagnosis had increased to 0.12 +/- 0.05 mmol/l at one month and 0.13 +/- 0.06 mmol/l at 3 months. These values were significantly lower (p less than 0.001) than in the non-epidemic patients at the same time points: 0.17 +/- 0.08 nmol/l; p less than 0.001, 0.23 +/- 0.11 nmol/l; p less than 0.001, and 0.22 +/- 0.10 nmol/l.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)