Brief Overview on Nephrotoxic Drugs: A Pharmacological Approach

This chapter highlights nephrotoxicityof drugs. Kidney is one of the vital organs maintaining homeostasis of body and thus dysfunction of kidney affects quality of life and health severely. Anticancer drugs, particularly chemotherapeutic agents, cause high toxicity leading to kidney dysfunction and irreparable kidney injury. Many chemotherapeutic agents are currently available to treat a variety of cancers but side effects of these drugs have brought about certain limitations in their use and eradication of cancer. Medications cause renal failure through a variety of mechanisms. Hemodynamic renal failure may result from drugs that reduce renal prostaglandins and hence renal blood flow and glomerular filtration rate. Recent analysis has raised doubts about association of metformin with lactic acidosis as causal. Renal failure is a common comorbidity in patients with lactic acidosis associated with metformin use and plasma metformin levels are inversely related to glomerular filtration rate (GFR) due to reduced clearance from the circulation.