The current study was conducted in African Americans because of the higher frequency of the
CYP3A5*1 allele in this population, and to control for the effects of genetic admixture when subjects were stratified according to
CYP3A5*1 allele carrier status (
Kuehl et al., 2001;
Lamba et al., 2002;
Zeigler-Johnson et al., 2004;
Roy et al., 2005). The presence of CYP3A5 protein has been used to explain disease associations linked to the
CYP3A4*1B allele since
CYP3A4*1B and
CYP3A5*1 alleles appeared to be strongly linked in some populations. The
CYP3A5*1 allele did not appear to be in LD with the
CYP3A4*1B allele in our study although strong LD has been observed in non-African populations (
Thompson et al., 2006). Recently, the
CYP3A7*2 allele was shown to be in high LD with the
CYP3A5*1 allele in African Americans (
Rodriguez-Antona et al., 2005;
Thompson et al., 2006).
Our results suggest that African Americans carrying at least one
CYP3A5*1 allele had higher basal ERBT values compared to those lacking the
CYP3A5*1 allele, and differences in basal activity may be associated with difference in susceptibility for induction-type drug interactions with glucocorticoids. It has been estimated that CYP3A5 can account for 6% to 85% of total hepatic CYP3A content and may contribute to increases in basal CYP3A activity in individuals who carry a functional
CYP3A5*1 allele (
Wrighton et al., 1990;
Kuehl et al., 2001;
Lin et al., 2002). Individuals carrying at least one
CYP3A5*1 allele exhibit a higher oral clearance, lower steady-state blood concentrations, and require higher tacrolimus doses to achieve therapeutic blood concentrations than patients lacking the
CYP3A5*1 allele (
Bader et al., 2000;
Hesselink et al., 2003;
Thervet et al., 2003;
Haufroid et al., 2004;
Hesselink et al., 2004). Recent studies evaluating saquinavir, indinavir, and quinidine have found a positive correlation between the presence of a
CYP3A5*1 allele and higher oral clearance (
Frohlich et al., 2004;
Mouly et al., 2005;
Anderson et al., 2006;
Mirghani et al., 2006).
Similar to previous observations (
Floyd et al., 2003;
Yu et al., 2004), the
CYP3A5*1 allele was not associated with differences in the ability of rifampin to induce ERBT values in our African American cohort. In contrast, induction of ERBT values by dexamethasone was only detected in non-carriers of the
CYP3A5*1 allele. Differences in potencies between these two inducers could explain this observation. Compared to the potent inductive effects of rifampin on CYP3A4 protein, the inductive effects of a less potent PXR activator, such as dexamethasone, could be obscured if a large proportion of the total CYP3A activity was due to functional CYP3A5 since CYP3A5 expression is constitutive and not altered by PXR activation (
Bertilsson et al., 1998;
Lehmann et al., 1998;
Burk et al., 2004). The proximal promoter of CYP3A5 contains a consensus ER-6 response element which may be important for its constitutive expression, although it lacks the distal PXR-response element shown to enhance transcription of CYP3A4 by xenobiotics (
Goodwin et al., 2002;
Burk and Wojnowski, 2004). Therefore, compared to CYP3A4, CYP3A5 appears to be less sensitive to induction by PXR activators and this has been confirmed in studies with human hepatocytes (
Burk et al., 2004).
Several recent reports suggest the
CYP3A5*1 allele may impart important clinical consequences due to the higher clearance of some CYP3A drugs (
Mouly et al., 2005;
Isoherranen et al., 2007;
Jin et al., 2007;
Josephson et al., 2007). More recently, low hepatic CYP3A activity was found to be associated with the risk for corticosteroid-induced osteonecrosis (
Kaneshiro et al., 2006). Our finding that
CYP3A5 polymorphism may influence basal levels of hepatic CYP3A activity and the inductive effects of corticosteroids suggests that absence of
CYP3A5*1 alleles may be associated with risk for corticosteroid-induced osteonecrosis.
In summary, CYP3A5 polymorphism appears to influence susceptibility to induction-type drug interactions for certain inducers, and CYP3A5*1 non-carriers may be more susceptible to the inductive effects of dexamethasone due to lower CYP3A4-dependent basal activity. These results may be particularly relevant for patients undergoing chemotherapy and receiving dexamethasone for delayed nausea. Our data also suggests that CYP3A5 genotype may have played a role in our previous finding of an inverse correlation between baseline hepatic CYP3A activity and the extent of CYP3A induction following a 5-day course of dexamethasone.