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Nephrotoxicity of Penicillium aurantiogriseum, a possible factor in the aetiology of Balkan Endemic Nephropathy

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Abstract

Water-soluble components of a nephrotoxic isolate of Penicillium aurantiogriseum have been fractionated by sequential ion-exchange, size-exclusion gel filtration, reverse-phase silica chromatography and HPLC. Nephrotoxicity in the rat was confined to a size-exclusion fraction approximating to 1500 daltons, which also inhibited DNA synthesis in cultured kidney cells. The more sensitive in vitro assay allowed toxicity to be followed to a sub-fraction from gradient-elution HPLC which in further HPLC resolved into a small group of glycopeptides. Recent Yugoslavian P. aurantiogriseum isolates, from a village in which the idiopathic human disease Balkan Nephropathy is hyperendemic, elicited a similar nephropathology and were acutely cytotoxic, reinforcing a need to regard this novel Penicillium nephrotoxin as a potential factor in human nephropathy.

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Yeulet, S.E., Mantle, P.G., Rudge, M.S. et al. Nephrotoxicity of Penicillium aurantiogriseum, a possible factor in the aetiology of Balkan Endemic Nephropathy. Mycopathologia 102, 21–30 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00436248

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