To investigate the association between cytochrome P450 2C19 (CYP2C19) gene polymorphism and cancer susceptibility by genotyping of CYP2C19 poor metabolizers (PMs) in cancer patients.
There is increasing interest in using pharmacogenetics to 'individualise medicine', however, the results of this study indicate that in a cancer population genotyping for CYP2C19 would significantly underestimate the number of phenotypic PM of drugs, such as cyclophosphamide, which may be metabolised by this enzyme.
Our aim was to determine if CYP2C19 mRNA and CYP2C19 enzyme protein expression differed between various tumors and normal tissue adjacent to the tumor tissue in Han Chinese cancer patients.
Risk was appreciably increased in subjects who had family history of any cancer and also harbored a variant genotype of either CYP2C19 (OR = 15.5) or CYP2D6 (OR = 9.7).
Previous reports indicate that discordance between CYP2C19 genotype and enzyme function occurs in up to 37 % of cancer patients with a range of solid tumours.
In contrast, inheritance of the CYP2A6*2 (OR = 0.51, 95% CI 0.28-1.06), CYP2C19*2 (OR = 0.72, 95% CI 0.52-0.98) and the EPHX1(His113) alleles were associated with reduced cancer risk.