Abstract
Cancers of the colon are commonly treated with fluoropyrimidines, which often cause severe toxicities in patients with certain variants in DPYD. Y186C (rs115232898) and a variant in the 3' untranslated region (rs12132152) are uncommon alleles previously observed in African-Americans. An African-American female underwent 5-fluorouracil-based therapy (400 mg/m2 bolus, 1200 mg/m2/day over 46 h). The patient experienced severe pancytopenia after the first cycle. After 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) dose reduction (600 mg/m2/day), the steady-state 5-FU plasma concentration became 474 ng/ml (range 301-619 ng/ml) and increased following a subsequence dose increase (800 mg/m2/day; 1248 ng/ml). After a 1000 mg/m2/day dose resulted in myelosuppression, 5-FU was again de-escalated for the remaining cycles (600 mg/m2). The observed complications are likely a function of uncommon genetic variants that affect DPYD metabolism.