In their preceding study on 109 patients that were part of the mixed-race cohort, the same group had reported that carriers of a CYP2C8 *3 variant (defined as a c.1196 G-allele and/or c.416 A-allele) showed a trend towards a higher risk of grade ⩾3 peripheral neuropathy ( P =0.075) ( Hertz et al , 2012 ).
Although the association did not reach statistical significance at a genome-wide level in the discovery phase, the predictive value of this A-allele was confirmed in two separate cohorts consisting of 154 European (HR per allele=1.72, P =0.013) and 117 African-American (HR per allele=1.93, P= 6.7 × 10 −3 ) patients.
In our study, TUBB2A c.-101T>C was not associated with paclitaxel-induced peripheral neuropathy, but showed an association with paclitaxel dose reduction at a borderline significant level (HR per C-allele=0.70).