Aromatase inhibitors (AIs) are anti-neoplastic drugs widely used for the treatment of endocrine responsive breast carcinoma in postmenopausal women. Drug disposition, efficacy and tolerability of these agents are influenced by germ-line polymorphisms in the sequence of the genes encoding CYP19A1 and TCL1A proteins. In the current work, we aimed to determine the haplotype structures, linkage disequilibrium (LD) patterns, and allele and genotype frequency distribution of pharmacologically important variants from two genes (CYP19A1 and TCL1A) in Tamil population and assessed their ethnic differences. DNA derived from peripheral leukocytes of 111 healthy subjects were genotyped for 15 pharmacogenetic variants by real time thermocycler through allelic discrimination method using TaqMan 5' nuclease genotyping assay. The polymorphic variant allele frequencies of CYP19A1 were 42.3% (rs4646, T), 18% (rs10046, T), 36% (rs700519, T), 16.7% (rs700518, G), 26.1% (rs727479, G), 18% (rs4775936, T), 32% (rs10459592, G), 15.3% (rs1062033, C), 33.8% (rs749292, A), 40.1% (rs6493497, T) and 40.1% (rs7176005, G). TCL1A gene allele frequencies were 26.1% (rs7158782, G), 27% (rs7159713, G), 21.2% (rs2369049, G) and 27.5% (rs11849538, G). Comparing our data across the 5 HapMap populations (CEU, GIH, HCB, JPT and YRI) huge inter-ethnic differences were exhibited in the variant allele frequencies, LD patterns and haplotype blocks. Our results emphasize the importance of normative frequency documentation and will offer significant clinical relevance in personalizing AIs therapy.

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