The list of individual medications that cause kidney damage is so long that it is difficult to create a top ten. Therefore, I have chosen to rank them by medication type: antibiotics, painkillers, and so on.
1. Antibiotica, waaronder ciprofloxacine, methicilline, vancomycine, sulfonamiden.
2. Painkillers, including paracetamol and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs): aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen and others available only by prescription.
3. COX-2 inhibitors, including celecoxib (brand name Celebrex). Two medicines in this class have been withdrawn from the market due to cardiovascular toxicity: rofecoxib (brand name Vioxx) and valdecoxib (brand name Bextra). These medicines belong to a special class of NSAIDs, developed to be safer for the stomach, but they carry the same risk of kidney damage as other NSAIDs.
4. Antacids from the class of proton pump inhibitors, including omeprazole (brand name Prilosec), lansoprazole (brand name Prevacid), pantoprazole (brand name Protonix), rabeprazole (brand names Rabecid, Aciphex), esomeprazole (brand names Nexium, Esotrex).
