Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Jun 16, 2017; 5(6): 234-237
Published online Jun 16, 2017. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v5.i6.234
Bilateral renal cortical necrosis associated with smoking synthetic cannabinoids
Kanaan Mansoor, Ashley Zawodniak, Tibor Nadasdy, Zeid J Khitan
Kanaan Mansoor, Ashley Zawodniak, Zeid J Khitan, Internal Medicine Department, Joan C Edwards School of Medicine, Marshall University, Huntington, WV 25701, United States
Tibor Nadasdy, Department of Renal and Transplant Pathology, the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, United States
Author contributions: All authors contributed in writing and revision of the manuscript according to the expertise.
Supported by Internal Medicine Department, Joan C Edwards School of Medicine, Marshall University.
Institutional review board statement: This case report was exempt from the Institutional Review Board standards at Marshall University, Huntington, WV, United States.
Informed consent statement: The patient involved in this study gave her written informed consent authorizing use and disclosure of her protected health information.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors have no conflicts of interests to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Zeid J Khitan, MD, Professor of Medicine, Chief (Renal Division), Internal Medicine Department, Joan C Edwards School of Medicine, Marshall University, 1 John Marshall Drive, Huntington, WV 25701, United states. zkhitan@marshall.edu
Telephone: +1-304-6911092 Fax: +1-304-6911693
Received: February 3, 2017
Peer-review started: February 7, 2017
First decision: March 7, 2017
Revised: March 15, 2017
Accepted: April 23, 2017
Article in press: April 24, 2017
Published online: June 16, 2017
Processing time: 131 Days and 0.7 Hours
Abstract

Synthetic cannabinoids have become a common drug of abuse in recent years and their toxicities have come to light as well. They are known to be notorious for the kidneys, with acute tubular necrosis, acute interstitial nephritis and rhabdomyolysis induced renal injury being the frequent nephrotoxic outcomes in users. We report a case of bilateral renal cortical necrosis, leading to irreversible renal damage and lifelong dialysis dependency.

Keywords: Synthetic cannabinoids; Renal cortical necrosis; Dialysis

Core tip: Renal cortical necrosis is a debilitating condition and has a number of causes, in our case a 47 years old female suffered from this condition after smoking synthetic cannabinoids (SCBs) which are a new form of synthetic illicit designer drugs. The patient presented with nausea for 5 d along with anuria for past 24 h before presentation. On laboratory findings the patient had thrombocytopenia while clinically the patient had thrombotic microangiopathy which leads to bilateral renal cortical necrosis. Patient was placed permanently on hemodialysis. Thus awareness needs to be dispersed about potential effects of SCBs.