Thursday, February 12, 2015

Evolution and medicine: the long reach of "Dr. Darwin"


all humans were the same. For many reasons, this is an error from an evolutionary perspective. In our current example, human CYP polymorphisms can manifest themselves in the form of intraspecific (i.e., individual) differences in drug metabolism. Two genes, CYP 2D6 and CYP 2C19 are particularly important since they affect how people metabolize approximately 25% of the drugs on the market [19].

Sipes and Gandolfi [20] observed that with respect to the antihypertensive agent debrisoquine, some 3 to 10 percent of Caucasians are poor metabolizers because they are homozygous for 2 nonfunctional alleles for CYP 2D6, the gene source of debrisoquine 4-hydroxylase enzyme. There appear to be more than 75 allelic variants of CYP 2D6 circulating in human populations [21].


---Steve

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