The aim of this article is to compare the incidence of thanatophobia in dialysed patients having Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN) with a control group (N18) members where some of them have chronic renal failure (CRF), but not (BEN). We examined thanatophobia on a sample of 753 dialysed patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) during the period from 1st January 2...

Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN) is a devastating tubulointerstitial kidney disease affecting men and women living in rural areas of Bosnia–Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Serbia [1]. The disease occurs exclusively in farming villages situated in valleys of the Danube River and its tributaries. Since its first description in 1956, the geographic distribution as well as other epidemi...

Spontaneous nephropathy in Bulgaria, which is observed frequently during meat inspection and which differs morphologically from the classical description of mycotoxic porcine/chicken nephropathy as made in Denmark, was found to have a multi-mycotoxic aetiology being mainly provoked by a combined effect of ochratoxin A, penicillic acid and fumonisin B1 in addition to a not-yet-known metabolite. ...

The purpose of the current review was to describe the clinical risk for Lynch syndrome (LS) after exposure to aristolochic acid (AA) in cases of upper urinary-tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC). A systematic review of the scientific literature was performed using the Medline database (National Library of Medicine, PubMed) using the following keywords: epidemiology, risk factor, AA, Balkan nephro...

Aristolochic acid (AA) has, in the last decade, become widely promoted as the cause of the Balkan endemic nephropathy and associated renal or urothelial tumours, although without substantial focal evidence of the quantitative dietary exposure via bread in specific households in hyperendemic villages. Occasional ethnobotanical use of Aristolochia clematitis might be a source of AA, and Pliocene ...

Analgesic nephropathy (AN) was described in 1953 as tubulointerstitial kidney disease associated with chronic abuse of analgetic mixtures. Chinese herbs nephropathy (CHN), another tubulointerstitial kidney disease, on the basis of morphological and clinical grounds, was found similar to Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN), and a common etiologic agent, aristolochic acid, was suspected. However, se...

Aristolochic acid (AA) is a plant alkaloid that causes aristolochic acid nephropathy (AAN) and Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN), unique renal diseases frequently associated with upper urothelial cancer (UUC). This review summarizes the significance of AA-derived DNA adducts in the aetiology of UUC leading to specific A:T to T:A transversion mutations (mutational signature) in AAN/BEN-associated...