“…The CYP2B6 gene is highly polymorphic as reflected by 29 associated alleles, many suballeles, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (http://www.imm.ki.se/CYPalleles/cyp2b6.htm). Of the variants identified so far, the CYP2B6*6 haplotype defined by two nonsynonymous SNPs, 516GϾT (Q172H) and 785AϾG (K262R), is clinically important because this allele or the SNP tagging it (G516T) occurs at high frequency in all ethnic populations [14 -62% ] and has been associated with functional consequences in expressed systems (Ariyoshi et al, 2001;Jinno et al, 2003;Bumpus and Hollenberg, 2008;Watanabe et al, 2010;Ariyoshi et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2011) and in human liver microsomes (HLMs) (Lang et al, 2001;Lamba et al, 2003;Xie et al, 2003;Hesse et al, 2004;Desta et al, 2007). Subsequent to the demonstration that CYP2B6 is the principal clearance mechanism of efavirenz in vitro (Ward et al, 2003), several studies have documented that the CYP2B6*6 allele or its tagging SNP is at increased risk for higher efavirenz exposure and/or adverse effects (Haas et al, 2004;Tsuchiya et al, 2004;Zanger et al, 2007).…”