Although not statistically significant, we also noted a trend towards a higher prevalence of the good prognosis p53(-)/Bcl-2(+) subgroup in earlier stage tumours, in agreement with the findings of Gouissa et al, who demonstrated a trend for the p53(-)/Bcl-2(+) phenotype to be associated with lymph node negative tumours in a study of 108 colorectal adenocarcinomas [22]. Here, BCL2 is linked to colorectal adenocarcinoma.