BACKGROUND: Anthracyclines are a mainstay of chemotherapy. However, a relatively frequent adverse outcome of anthracycline treatment is cardiomyopathy. Multiple genetic studies have begun to dissect the complex genetics underlying cardiac sensitivity to the anthracycline drug class. A number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified to be in linkage disequilibrium with anthracycline induced cardiotoxicity in paediatric populations. METHODS: Here we screened for the presence of SNPs resulting in a missense coding change in a cohort of children with early onset chemotherapy related cardiomyopathy. The SNP identity was evaluated by Sanger sequencing of PCR amplicons from genomic DNA of patients with anthracycline related cardiac dysfunction. RESULTS: All of the published SNPs were observed within our patient group. There was no correlation between the number of missense variants an individual carried with severity of disease. Furthermore, the time to cardiac disease onset post-treatment was not greater in those individuals carrying a high load of SNPs resulting from missense variants. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that previously identified missense SNPs are present within a paediatric cohort with early onset heart damage induced by anthracyclines. However, these SNPs require further replication cohorts and functional validation before being deployed to assess anthracycline cardiotoxicity risk in the clinic.