ABSTRACT
Doxorubicin, an anthracycline chemotherapy drug, plays a crucial role in treating diverse cancers like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, lymphomas, and sarcomas. Despite its effectiveness, its clinical application is constrained by dose-dependent cardiotoxic side effects. These adverse effects, characterized by acute or chronic cardiomyopathy, contribute to heart failure, thereby elevating morbidity and mortality rates among cancer patients post-treatment.Fumarate, a metabolite involved in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and crucial for cellular metabolism, has demonstrated antioxidant and anti-inflammatoryproperties in numerous experimental cardiovascular disease models. This indicates that supplementing with fumarate could potentially alleviate doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity.Doxorubicin toxicity has been reported to cause renal toxicity with elevated levels of serum creatinine, serum urea and electrolytes (Na+,K+, Cl-, HCO3-). This study evaluated the renal profile levels of doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxic Wistar rats treated with fumarate. A total of thirty-two Wistar rats were used in this study. Animals were divided into four (4) groups: control group, doxorubicin administered group, fumarate 50mg/kg administered group, and fumarate 100mg/kg administered group. Animals were sacrificed and blood samples collected for the assay of serum urea, creatinine and electrolytes on the tenth day following the onset of treatment. Results showed no significant increase (P>0.05)in serum urea, creatinine, Na+,K+, Cl- and HCO3-.This study suggests that the treatment of doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity with fumarate has no effect on renal architecture of the kidney or its function. This finding may have resulted from the study duration and possibly administered doses as employed in this study thus, further studies with longer duration and altered doses of both doxorubicin and fumarate are suggested.
