Summary Background: Oxidative stress can accompany the physio- pathology of diabetes mellitus. Myelopercecidase and gluta- mate-cysteine ligase catalytic subunit are two important sub- stances which are connected with the maintaining of the redox balance in the body. In this study, the association be- tween diabetes, lipid levels, myeloperoxidase -463G/A, and the glutamate-cysteine ligase catalytic subunit -3506A/G gene polymorphisms have been investigated. Methods: Frequencies of genotypes and alleles have been assessed using PCR-RFLP techniques in 90 type 2 diabetic patients and 70 healthy controls. Results: We found an association between myeloperoxidase -463 G/A genotype distributions (p=0.023) and allele distri- butions (p=0.009) in the study groups. In addition, there is a significant difference for each of the genotype (p=0.014) and allele (p=0.007) distributions for the glutamate-cysteine ligase catalytic subunit -3506A/G polymorphism. Conclusions: Our study reveals the first data about the myeloperoxidase -463G/A and glutamate-cysteine ligase catalytic subunit -3506A/G gene polymorphisms for type 2 diabetes and we believe that this work will play a pioneering role for further studies.