Evaluation of Fetal and Maternal Vancomycin-Induced Kidney Injury during Pregnancy in a Rat Model

• Published in: Antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy 2019-10, Vol.63 (10)
• Main Authors: Joshi, Medha D, Pais, Gwendolyn M, Chang, Jack, Hlukhenka, Khrystyna, Avedissian, Sean N, Gulati, Anil, Prozialeck, Walter C, Lamar, Peter C, Zhang, Zhong, Scheetz, Marc H, Griffin, Brooke
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Kidney; Kidney Diseases; Pharmacology; Vancomycin
• ISSN: 0066-4804; 1098-6596
• DOI: 10.1128/AAC.00761-19

Previous literature suggests that maternal vancomycin crosses the placental barrier to the fetus. Further, early animal studies indicated that kidney injury was not observed in the progeny. These studies were conducted prior to the availability of sensitive biomarkers for kidney injury. Therefore, a previous finding of no renal damage to the infant may be misleading. Vancomycin was administered intravenously to pregnant rats at a dose of 250 mg/kg of body weight/day (  = 6 per trimester) on three consecutive gestational days (GD) during trimesters 1, 2, and 3 (T1, T2, and T3, respectively) in three independent cohorts. The dams carried to term and delivered vaginally on GD 21. Kidneys were harvested from dams and pups and homogenized. Samples were prepared by protein precipitation and injected in a liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometer, and vancomycin was quantified. The kidney tissue homogenate from dams and pups were analyzed for kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1). As trimesters progressed, the quantity of vancomycin increased linearly in the kidneys of both rat dams and pups (