Magnesium in kidney diseases. A review.

During the last decades the kidney has emerged as a key organ in the homeostasis of magnesium and disturbances of magnesium metabolism have been described in several renal diseases. Restoring body stores to normal levels should be one of the goals in the conservative treatment of end stage renal failure, since magnesium retention is thought to participate in uraemic toxicity. The kidney is also the target organ of many drugs and increased magnesium excretion can be observed either as an obligatory side effect or as a sign of nephrotoxicity. Magnesium depletion could participate in the vascular complications observed with such drugs. The significance of hypomagnesaemia in Bartter's syndrome remains obscure. Renal stone disease is frequently associated with a low urinary magnesium output, although the determinants of this abnormality are still not well understood.