NSAIDs Can Cause Heart and Kidney Problems

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, are widely used as painkillers. However, prolonged use of these drugs raises the risk of cardiorenal syndrome, a condition characterized by simultaneous heart and kidney failure events.

To understand the mechanisms that cause cardiorenal syndrome, University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers pretreated animals with the NSAID carprofen in a mouse heart attack model. The researchers wanted to see if carprofen affects the immune system’s response to heart attack damage: (1) acute inflammation, where leukocytes rush into heart muscle to remove dead cells and debris, and (2) the dampening of excess inflammation caused by those leukocytes.

In their study, published this week in Life Sciences, the team found that carprofen treatment alone triggered subtle low-grade inflammation in the heart and kidneys. The combination of carprofen pretreatment and heart attack magnified this impact by dysregulating the acute inflammatory response, amplifying inflammation, and intensifying the cardiorenal syndrome.

The researchers found that carprofen, even without heart attack, triggered kidney inflammation. It also caused increased levels of certain inflammatory cytokines and other proteins that suggested that both the acute inflammation phase and the resolution of inflammation phase are falsely activated during carprofen pretreatment before any heart injury.

When the pretreatment with carprofen was followed by heart attack, there was a dysregulation of cytokines that resulted in less clearance of dead cells from the heart. Also, carprofen pretreatment coupled with heart attack amplified subsequent kidney tissue damage, as compared with kidney damage after heart attack alone.