Type 2 diabetes accounts for at least 90% of all cases of diabetes. It is a familiar disease with a lifetime risk of 40% if one parent has type 2 diabetes. This disease affects not only the elderly and middle-aged people, but also increasingly young people. There are also marked racial differences in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes; prevalence rates in Asian and American Indians populations are particularly high. Since the autonomic nervous system plays a major role in normal physiological function and in the pathogenesis of many medical disorders, measurement of heart rate variability (HRV) provides an easily applied non-invasive method of assessing cardiac autonomic regulation. Some studies have shown that alter cardiac autonomic regulation in subjects with parental history of type 2 diabetes. However, there are controversial reports. Thus, we aimed to study the cardiac autonomic regulation as measured by HRV in young adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes. The study was conducted on 40 young adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes and 40 young adults without parental history of type 2 diabetes. The short term HRV was assessed in both the groups. In time domain measures, standard deviation of all RR intervals (SDNN) [26.5 (22-33) vs 33.5 (25-37.75) ms, P=0.014], the square root of the mean of the sum of the squares of differences between adjacent RR intervals (RMSSD) [25.85 (16.22-33.8) vs 30.9 (24.4-41.67) ms, P=0.013], and percentage of consecutive RR intervals that differ by more than 50 ms (pNN50) [4.6 (1.1-13.77) vs 12.4 (2.8-26.82) %, P=0.022] were significantly less in young adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes. In frequency domain measures, low frequency (LF) [115.5 (83.75-140.75) vs 141 (104.25-249.75) ms2, P=0.021], high frequency (HF) [114.5 (74.5-179) vs 182.5 (104.25-247) ms2, P=0.006] and HF [33.3 (24.52-53.22) vs 56.8 (43.02-69.17) nu, P=0.002] were significantly less in young adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes. Whereas, LF [49.8 (36.97-69.55) vs 45.2 (35.4-57.02) nu] and LF/HF [0.98 (0.65-1.62) vs 0.85 (0.5-2.02) %] were comparable between the groups. This study indicates that parental type 2 diabetes has an impact on the cardiac autonomic function in non-diabetic young adults.