Previous allelotyping studies on colorectal carcinoma suggest that loss of heterozygosity (LOH) on chromosome 14q may be a common genetic alteration in this tumor type. The purpose of this study was to determine precise frequency of LOH at 14q32 region in colorectal carcinomas and to define a minimal region of LOH. LOH at 14q32 in 66 primary colorectal carcinomas were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction-based deletion mapping using six highly polymorphic microsatellites. The average rate of informative data was 68.2% in all cases of colorectal carcinoma analyzed. The average rate of LOH at 14q32 was 44.1%, with the highest frequency of 50.0% at D14S267 locus in the informative cases. The minimal region of LOH was defined by markers D14S65 and D14S250 at 14q32. The present data provide useful information for the isolation of tumor suppressor genes from this region.