Nephrotoxic injury is damage to one or both of the kidneys that results from exposure to a toxic material, usually something taken by mouth.

The kidneys are the primary organs of the urinary system, which removes waste from the blood and excretes them from the body in urine. Every day, the kidneys filter about 45 gal (180 l) of blood, about four times as much as the amount that passes through any other organ. Because of this high volume, the kidneys are more often exposed to toxic substances in the blood and are very vulnerable to injury from those materials.

Each kidney contains more than one million structures called nephrons. Each nephron consists of two parts: the renal corpuscle and the renal tubule. The renal corpuscle is where the blood is filtered. It is made up of a network of capillaries (the glomerulus) and the structure that surrounds...