Drugs and toxins that damage the kidney

A wide variety of pharmacological agents, drugs of misuse and environmental pollutants can cause an equally wide variety of renal disease. Drug-induced renal disease can range from renal-vasculitis, to insidious, progressive chronic kidney disease to ureteric obstruction. Consequently, the clinician should always consider these as a potential cause for any newly diagnosed case of renal disease. Therefore a thorough drug history, including recent changes in medications, over-the-counter medications and abused drugs, is mandatory. In this contribution we present some of the commoner and more important presentations.