Conivaptan and Boric Acid Treatments in Acute Kidney Injury: Is This Combination Effective and Safe?

Acute kidney injury is still a worldwide clinic problem that affects kidney function and associated with high mortality risk. Unfortunately, approximately 1.7 million people are thought to die from acute kidney injury each year. Boron element is defined as an "essential trace element" for plants and thought to have a widespread role in living organisms. Boric acid, which is one of the important forms of boron, has been extensively discussed for both medicinal and nonmedicinal purposes. However, there is a lack of data in the literature to examine the relationship between boric acid and antidiuretic hormone (ADH) antagonism in kidney injury. Thus, we aimed to investigate the effects of conivaptan as an ADH antagonist and boric acid as an antioxidant agent on the post-ischemic renal injury process. In this study, the unilateral ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury rat model with contralateral nephrectomy was performed and blood/kidney tissue samples were taken at 6th hours of reperfusion. The effects of 10 mg/mL/kg conivaptan and 50 mg/kg boric acid were examined with the help of some biochemical and histological analyses. We observed that conivaptan generally alleviated the destructive effects of I/R and has therapeutic effects. Also of note is that conivaptan and boric acid combination tended to show negative effects on kidney function, considering the highest BUN (78.46 ± 3.88 mg/dL) and creatinine levels (1.561 ± 0.1018 mg/dL), suggesting possibly drug-drug interaction. Although it has reported that conivaptan can interact with other active substances, no experimental/clinical data on the possible interaction with boric acid have reported so far.