Grant: Team Gr.: Interv. Trial in Inflam. for Chronic Cond. - Res. Teams Gr. - General

Medications are often needed to treat a variety of health conditions among people in hospital. Although required to improve health, some medications can harm the kidneys, resulting in complications that lead to kidney and heart disease. Our team has identified a medication called cilastatin that can prevent these medications from building up in the kidneys and causing the inflammation that leads to kidney and heart disease. Cilastatin is already used for other reasons and is safe; however, it has not yet been tested to see if it can prevent kidney damage and the subsequent kidney and heart disease that some people will develop following the use of some medications. This study will recruit people treated with medications that can be toxic to the kidneys and assign a group of them to cilastatin and another group to a placebo (i.e. water). The study will determine if the group treated with cilastatin have better health outcomes than the group assigned to placebo. If this trial proves that cilastatin is effective, its use could prevent the development of kidney damage in more than 10,000 Canadians each year and avoid kidney and heart disease complications that could save approximately $78 million in Canada annually.