Hypermethylation of ABO was found in 11 out of 34 (32%) tumour samples and in three adjacent epithelia (Table 1) (Gao et al, 2004), but there was no correlation between the DBCCR1 and ABO hypermethylation events (P = 0.11; Tables 1 and 2). The gene discussed is ABO; the disease is neoplasm.