A new category for understanding the mechanisms of drug-induced kidney injury.

Medications contribute to about a quarter of acute kidney injury (AKI) cases among patients in hospitals. The impact of AKI is substantial on both families and society, and it has become a worldwide public health concern. Recently, a new framework for drug-induced acute kidney injury (DI-AKI) classification has been proposed. According to this new framework, drugs are divided into four categories. Thus, we explain the mechanism thoroughly and give examples of drugs or drug categories linked to the classes in the new framework. Furthermore, a patient's condition may dynamically shift between categories. At the same time, we also took into account some susceptibility factors. These susceptibility factors may drive inter-class variation. The new classification system may shed new light on the mechanism of DI-AKI for clinicians and researchers.