About

There are more than 50 000 drugs on the world market, 5000 may have functional effects, but only a minority cause morphologically relevant renal side effects (about 500). Furthermore, renal side effects are rarely seen in biopsies (in my experience in less than 1% in a biopsy collection of 1000 biopsies per year). So, many pathologists are not aware that this or that drug may cause renal side effects and many drug related side effects pass unnoticed in daily diagnostic practice.

Many renal side effects are poorly described and there are very few relevant and widely dispersed publications for pathologists. This is another reason why many pathologists evaluating renal biopsies do not really pay close attention to the drugs given to the patients.The side effects of many drugs were described many years ago, and due to the fact that renal side effects are a rare and often late phenomena, the drugs in question became “forgotten”.

In summary, the NephroTox data base could increase awareness and knowledge within the interested medical community, especially pathologists and physicians, concerning drug related side effects, improve the information available about drugs and about the morphological features seen after treatment with certain drugs.

Furthermore, the database could be an excellent tool to monitor new drugs concerning possible side effects and to define the morphological features as quickly as possible.

Finally, the database could help to generate epidemiological data concerning renal side effects about old and new drugs.

Everybody is kindly invited to write comments to improve the information presented (text, figures etc.)

The use of the database is free of charge for everyone. The figures may be used for teaching and training without permission. For commercial use written permission must be obtained by the author.

If you find the website helpful for the mangement of your patients, you are  kindly invited to donate to the Childhood Cancer Foundation, Basel, Switzerland.
https://www.stiftung-kinderkrebs.ch/spenden/?stiftung--krebskranke-kinder-basel/spende

Michael J. Mihatsch

Michael-j.mihatsch@unibas.ch