APOE and colorectal carcinoma: In smaller studies, Kervinen et al. (1996) [165] compared 135 patients with colonic adenomas, 122 patients with colon cancer, and 199 randomly selected controls and found that the APOE ε4 allele was less frequent, suggesting that other APOE variants might be associated with higher risk in the development of proximal colonic adenomas and CRC [166].