Fenoldopam for preventing and treating acute kidney injury

Fenoldopam is a short-acting benzazepine selective dopaminergic A1 (DA1) receptor agonist with increased activity at the D1 receptor compared with dopamine. Activation of the DA1 receptors increases kidney blood flow because of dilatation of the afferent and efferent arterioles. Previous reviews have been published on the efficacy and safety of fenoldopam for acute kidney injury (AKI); however, they either combined data on its effect on both prevention and treatment of AKI, focused on only those undergoing cardiac surgery and/or excluded children. This review aimed to assess the benefits and harms of fenoldopam for the prevention or treatment of AKI in children and adults. We searched the Cochrane Kidney and Transplant Register of Studies up to 12 November 2024 through contact with the Information Specialist using search terms relevant to this review. Studies in the Register were identified through searches of CENTRAL, MEDLINE, and EMBASE, conference proceedings, the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) Search Portal and ClinicalTrials.gov. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating fenoldopam for the prevention or treatment of AKI in children and adults following surgery, radiocontrast exposure or sepsis. Two authors independently assessed studies for eligibility, assessed the studies for risk of bias and extracted data from the studies. Dichotomous outcomes were presented as relative risk (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). For continuous outcomes, the mean difference (MD) with 95% CI was used. Statistical analysis was performed using the random-effects model. We assessed the certainty of the evidence using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations (GRADE) approach. We identified 25 RCTs, including 3339 randomised participants. Twenty-three studies used fenoldopam for preventing AKI and two for the treatment of AKI. Nine studies included participants undergoing cardiac surgery, and one included children. The risks of bias for sequence generation and concealment were low in 11 and 13 studies, respectively. Only 13 and 18 studies were at low risk of performance bias and detection bias, respectively. The risk of attrition bias and selective reporting were judged to be at low risk of bias in 17 and 10 studies, respectively. We included data in the meta-analyses from eight of the 14 studies comparing fenoldopam with placebo or saline, all six studies comparing fenoldopam with dopamine, all