Association of poor metabolizers of cytochrome P450 2C19 with head and neck cancer and poor treatment response

Abstract A case–control study consisting of 300 patients and an equal number of healthy controls was carried out to investigate the association of polymorphism in cytochrome P450 2C19 (CYP2C19), which results in poor and extensive metabolizers (PMs and EMs) genotypes, with squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck (HNSCC) and treatment response in patients receiving combination of chemo-radiotherapy. A higher frequency of CYP2C19*2 variants was observed in the cases resulting in significantly higher risk to HNSCC (Ad OR 3.36, 95% CI 1.94–5.82, p -value