Adhikari A et al. American Journal of Cancer Biology 2016, 4:1-5 Ivy Union Publishing | http: //www.ivyunion.org May 28, 2016 | Volume 4 | Issue 1 Page 1 of 5 Betel Quid Addiction: Blessing or Curse , A Study of North East Population of India Aniket Adhikari * , and Madhusnata De Department of Genetics, Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratishthan, Vivekananda Institute of Medical Sciences, India Keywords : Oral cancer; Betel quid; CYP2A6 polymorphism Academic Editor : XiaoningPeng, PhD, Department of Internal Medicine, Hunan Normal University School of Medicine, China Received: March 24, 2016; Accepted: April 18, 2016; Published: May 28, 2016 Competing Interests : The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Copyright : 2016, Adhikari A et al . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. * Correspondence to : Aniket Adhikari, Department of Genetics, Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratishthan, Vivekananda Institute of Medical Sciences, India Email : aniket_adhikari@rediffmail.com Abstract Introduction: Oral cancer is most common cancer in males and third most common in females, one of the main causative agent being use of chewing betel quid (BQ). Areca nut (Areca catechu), a major component of BQ, contains certain alkaloids that give rise to nitrosamines. CYP2A6 genetic polymorphism were studied among the Eastern and North eastern indian population . Methods : In this present study subjects were screened from Department of E.N.T. & Oral and Maxillofacial surgery of RKMSP hospital, Kolkata and different areas of Eastern and North Eastern states of India. Polymorphism of CYP2A6 gene was studied from EDTA blood . Results: Some of the cases had more than one addiction. It has been found that most of the subjects had betel quid chewing habit. Early metabolizer are susceptible to oral cancer where as in case of poor metabolizers chances are less.Conclusion: Betel quid has an immense role in changing the oral pathology and developing oral cancer. American Journal of Cancer Biology http://ivyunion.org/index.php/ajcb/ Research Article