A common two-allele MspI restriction fragment length polymorphism of the human erythroid porphobilinogen (PBG)-deaminase gene was investigated in 33 unrelated patients with acute intermittent porphyria (AIP) and 20 controls. The polymorphism was tightly linked (lod score 3.14; no recombinants) to the locus for AIP as identified by measurement of erythrocyte PBG-deaminase activity. The frequency of the polymorphism in the AIP patients did not differ significantly from that in the controls. No common polymorphisms for eight other restriction endonucleases were found in either group. In 30 of the AIP patients no crossreacting immunological material (CRIM) was produced by the mutant PBG-deaminase allele. The MspI polymorphism enabled each PBG-deaminase allele to be distinguished in subjects heterozygous for the polymorphism; thus a major gene deletion was excluded as the cause of the CRIM-negative mutation in all of the 18 families that contained an affected CRIM-negative individual heterozygous for the polymorphism. In suitable families, the MspI polymorphism provides a more certain way of identifying carriers of the AIP gene than current enzymatic methods and major gene deletions are unlikely to be present in more than a small proportion of the commonest type of AIP, the CRIM-negative form.