Recently a mutation in the parking gene has been identified as the cause for an autosomal-recessively inherited form of early onset Parkinson's disease (EOPD). The disease causing minimal deletion has been defined as a homozygous exon 4 loss in the parkin gene among Japanese patients. We investigated 140 sporadic and familial EOPD patients of German ancestry for the exon 4 deletion in the parkin gene. None of our patients exhibited a homozygous deletion of exon 4, suggesting a minor role of this mutation for EOPD in Caucasians. Nevertheless a detailed mutation analysis is warranted to explore the overall significance of mutations in the parkin gene in EOPD.