Preliminary results on Ochratoxin A concentrations in blood of patients with various kidney diseases in Germany.

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is supposed to induce renal diseases in man and animals and a correlation between renal diseases and OTA concentration in blood is suspected. Therefore, we measured OTA concentrations in blood of subjects suffering from various renal diseases as e.g. interstitial nephritis or mesangial proliferating glomerular nephritis (GN) and compared them with the blood concentration of healthy individuals. We found OTA in 87% of all samples. There was no significant difference between OTA concentrations of healthy individuals and patients but some renal diseases (e.g. chronic glomerular nephritis) showed increased numbers of samples containing more than 1.5 nmol/l OTA in sera. In contrast, in samples from patients suffering from membranous or focal-sclerotic glomerular nephritis no concentrations above 1.5 nmol/l were found. Our preliminary results show that OTA is abundant in nearly all serum samples but some renal diseases show increased numbers of samples with high (>1.5 nmol/l) OTA concentrations.