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MALIGNANT hyperthermia (MH) is an inherited human skeletal muscle disorder and is one of the main causes of death due to anaesthesia¹. The reported incidence of MH varies from 1 in 12,000 in children to 1 in 40,000 in adults^2,3. MH is triggered in susceptible people by all commonly used inhalational anaesthetics; it is characterized by a profoundly accelerated muscle metabolism, contractures, hyperthermia and tachycardia^1,4,5. Susceptibility to MH (MHS) is predicted by contracture tests on muscle tissue obtained by biopsy^6,7. An almost identical disorder known as porcine MH exists in pigs^8,9. The genetics of the porcine syndrome have been extensively studied¹⁰; the locus controlling expression of porcine MH is genetically linked to the glucose phosphate isomerase locus (GPI)¹¹. In man, GPI has been mapped to the q12–13.2 region of chromosome 19 (refs 10–12). We have now investigated genetic …