Abstract
Presently, warfarin sodium or coumadin is the therapeutic drug of choice for maintenance anticoagualtion therapy. One of several factors underlying the variability in warfarin dose response in the patients receiving this oral anticoagulant is a genetic predisposition, especially the CYP2C9 polymorphisms. The pharmacogenomic effect of CYP2C9 polymorphisms is assessed in different racial populations. A retrospective review was performed with an electronic search engine on this topic to get the data for further meta-analysis. A significant correlation between population ethnicity and gene frequencies was detected in this study. A significant low frequency of CYP2C9 variants among the Asian can be demonstrated. The clinical correlation between CYP2C9 polymorphism and warfarin metabolism was also assessed. Four available case-control reports were selected for this meta-analysis. CYP2C9 variants are strongly associated with low-dose warfarin requirement. In summary, the CYP2C9 variants strongly affect the warfarin dose requirement. This phenomenon is ethnically dependent. Due to the high variant frequency among whites in the West, the investigation for CYP2C9 might be useful for this population, not the Asians, whose variant frequency is very low.