Drugs of abuse and renal disease

The complications of drug abuse encompass a spectrum of glomerular, interstitial, and vascular diseases. They comprise the heroin-associated nephropathy seen in African-American intravenous drug addicts, which, however, has given way in the 1990s to HIV-associated nephropathy. Infections with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus may cause acute glomerulonephritis by releasing bacterial superantigens. Hepatitis C has supplanted hepatitis B and may give rise to membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis and cryoglobulinemia. Addicts who inject drugs subcutaneously ('skin popping') may develop amyloidosis. Cocaine causes rhabdomyolysis, severe hypertension, occasionally renal failure in the absence of rhabdomyolysis, and may hasten progression to uremia in patients with underlying renal insufficiency. 'Ecstasy', an amphetamine-like recreational drug, has caused acute renal failure, electrolyte disturbances, and malignant hypertension. In Belgium and some other European countries, women taking Chinese herbs in a slimming regimen have developed a severe and irreversible interstitial fibrosis that is assuming epidemic proportions.