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Gentamicin is an important aminoglycoside antibiotic. Howeverits use is limited to serious and life threatening gram negativeinfections, because of its high nephrotoxicity potential in patients.There are reports that safranal, the active ingredient ofsaffron with antioxidant properties, exerts protective effectagainst ischemic injuries occurred by certain nephrotoxins includinggentamicin. Therefore, in the present study, we examinedthe protective effect of safranal against gentamicin-inducednephrotoxicity in rat. After acclimatization, animals were randomlydivided to three groups (8 rats /each group). On day one,each animal was placed separately in a metabolic cage for collecting24-hour urine samples. On day two, after collectingurine samples for measuring glucose and protein, the rats ingroup 1 received saline 1 ml/kg for 6 days, those in group 2 receivedgentamicin 80 mg/kg/day for 6 days, and the remainingrats in group 3 received safranal 0.5 ml/kg followed by gentamicin80 mg/kg/day for 6 days. Injections were intraperitoneally.All the animals were euthanized 24 hours after the lastdose. Blood samples were collected by cardiac puncture, andconcentration of blood urea, creatinine, and urinary glucose andprotein, as the indicators of nephrotoxicity were measured. Ourresults showed that in group 2, concentration of blood urea nitrogenp<0.01, creatinine p<0.05, urinary glucose p<0.001, andprotein p<0.01 were significantly increased compared with thecontrol and safranal-treated groups. There was no significantdifference between the control and safranal-treated groups.Safranal exerts protective effects against gentamicin-inducednephrotoxicity in rat.