Renal Apoptosis in Male Rats Induced by Extensive Dietary Exposure to Ochratoxins

During the 70 years since the Balkan endemic nephropathy was recognised, failure to make a universal diagnostic cause continues for some critical researchers. Claims for cause by toxic molecules from microorganisms and/or plants are difficult to verify experimentally in retrospect, partly because no lifetime human experimentation is possible and partly since no experimental source is a convincing model. Apoptosis as a primary step in human nuclear decline has been a source of experiments for many years. Now, one has been used, which employs the detection of abnormal nuclear hydroxyls by using an Abcam histology protocol. Recent access to a few human tissues diagnosed for the Balkan nephropathy has enabled preliminary exploration to publish some positive human manifestations of apoptosis. Parallel use and positive findings have also now illustrated applications to experimental rats' kidneys after daily dietary exposure to ochratoxin A in lifetime experiments. Focus on renal cortical nephrons and their nuclei reveals a TUNEL-stained pattern with intensity linked to many months of the sub-clinical ochratoxin dietary exposure. The pattern survives long after exposure, but where experimental rats have internally developed cancer did not arise outside the kidney. Our experimental rat findings could not attribute the mechanism for the very different human urothelial tumours to traces of dietary ochratoxin A, but the present study encourages the exploration of more archived Balkan nephropathy renal cases to predict the focal urothelial origin of early tumours.