Abstract
Context: Kidney is one of the vital organs maintaining homeostasis of body and thus
dysfunction of kidney affects quality of life and health severely. Anticancer drugs,
particularly chemotherapeutic agents, cause high toxicity leading kidney dysfunction
and irreparable kidney injury. Therefore, attention has recently been paid to seeking out
alternatives such as nature-based drugs that are effective but less toxic. In this regard, this
systematic review article is to report and introduce the most important medicinal plants
and their derivatives that are used to reduce anticancer drug-induced nephrotoxicity.
Evidence Acquisitions: The word nephrotoxicity alongside the words cancer or chemotherapy
in combination with some herbal terms such as medicinal plant, plants, herbs, and extracts
were administered to search for relevant publications indexed in PubMed.
Results: According to this study, 16 medicinal plants, 12 plant-based derivatives, and three
traditional plant-based formulations were found to help control and modulate anticancer
drug-induced nephrotoxicity indices.
Conclusions: Anticancer drugs cause nephrotoxicity through activating pathways of oxidative
stress, damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) production, inflammatory
processes, and cell apoptosis, while medicinal plants and their derivatives can cause
reduction in nephrotoxicity and anticancer drugs side effects via their antioxidant and
anti-inflammatory properties.