ABSTRACT
The present review focuses on the pharmacogenetics of the cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes in Hispanic populations, comprising the people living in Spanish speaking countries of the Americas as well as those categorized as Hispanics in the United States. We acknowledge the diversity of these peoples by their country of origin or residence, culture, as well as genetic composition, the latter resulting from centuries of inter-ethnic crosses be tween Amerindians, Europeans and Africans. This diversity is reflected in the frequency distri bution of polymorphisms at the C YP genes that encode the main CYP enzymes involved in the biotransformation of xenobiotics, namely CYPIAI, CYP1A2, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, CYP2E1, CYP3A4 and CYP3A5. Our review of the literature disclosed data for all these CYPs only in Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. For other populations, including extant Amerindian groups, scattered information was recovered on individual CYPs. For several Latin American countries, no information could be retrieved on any of these enzymes or, indeed other pharmacogenetic targets. With the purpose of fulfilling this information gap and to promote collabo rative pharmacogenetic/genomic research in Spanish-and Portuguese-speaking peoples in the Americas and the Iberian peninsula, a network-the Iberian American Network of Pharmaco genetics and Pharmacogenomics-was recendy created. This initiative represents a promising step towards the inclusion of Latin American populations among those who will benefit from the implementation of pharmacogenetic principles and tools in drug therapy.
