In recent years, the study of pharmacogenetics has attracted increasing interest among clinical pharmacologists. New discoveries in the field of drug metabolism promised to provide a better understanding of interindividual variability of drug response. However, in epidemiological studies of the incidence of adverse drug reactions so far, pharmacogenetic aspects are seldom considered. The list of pharmacogenetic phenomena is not comprised only of rare genetic traits; indeed, the gene frequency connected with several phenomena is sufficiently high to allow for a stratification of a given group of patients according to such traits.
The oxidative polymorphism of debrisoquine (DBQ) has been determined in 89 patients with colo-rectal cancer and in 556 normal control subjects. Four patients and 34 controls, with a metabolic ratio >12.6, were classified as poor metabolisers of DBQ (n.s.).
Berzelius failed to make use of Faraday's electrochemical laws in his laborious determination of equivalent weights.