Background: The atypical antipsychotic drug clozapine is metabolized by CYP1A2. The activity of CYP1A2 is highly variable and is among others dependent on smoking habits. Certain genotypes of CYP1A2 have been associated with increased inducibility/activity of CYP1A2. However, the relevance of genotyping for these mutations in a clinical setting has not yet been demonstrated.
Methods: In this study, the CYP1A2 *1F, *1C and *1D genotypes of 58 schizophrenic patients on clozapine treatment were correlated with clozapine serum concentrations corrected for dose and weight or concentration/dosage ratios.
Results: The allele frequency of *1F and *1D was 67% and 6%, respectively. With an allele frequency of 1%, the occurrence of *1C was very low. Multivariate analysis of variance did not reveal any significant correlations between CYP1A2 genotypes and clozapine clearance in these subjects, although a possible effect of the *1D allele cannot be excluded in this study.
Conclusion: Although this study was performed using samples from a limited number of patients, routine genotyping of CYP1A2 *1F, *1C or *1D polymorphisms for their effect on metabolic capacity is, at least in Caucasians, not yet indicated.
