Obese, Diabetics Have Increased Risk For Kidney Stones

Individuals who are obese or diabetic have an increased risk for kidney stones, according to a new study presented at the 2012 American Urological Meeting in Atlanta. The study, which will appear in the July issue of the journal European Urology, found the number of Americans suffering from kidney stones between 2007 and 2010 nearly doubled since 1994.

“While we expected the prevalence of kidney stones to increase, the size of the increase was surprising," says Charles D. Scales, Jr., MD, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Clinical Scholar in the departments of urology and medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Our findings also suggested that the increase is due, in large part, to the increase in obesity and diabetes among Americans."

The study is one of the first to examine the new data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) that was collected from 2007 to 2010. The researchers reviewed responses from 12,110 people and found that between 2007 and 2010, 8.8% of the U.S. population had a kidney stone, or 1 out of every 11 people. In 1994 the rate was 1 in 20. No data about the national prevalence of kidney stones in the United States were collected between 1994 and 2007.

Because the survey also asks about other health conditions, and includes measurement of height and weight, the researchers were able to identify associations between kidney stones and other health conditions. The results suggest that obesity, diabetes, and gout all increase the risk of kidney stones.

The researchers said physicians need to rethink how to treat, and more importantly, prevent kidney stones by helping patients maintain a healthy diet and body weight can reduce the number of patients with kidney stones.

“Imagine that we only treated people with heart disease when they had chest pain or heart attacks, and did not help manage risk factors like smoking, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure," they said. “This is how we currently treat people with kidney stones. We know the risk factors for kidney stones, but treatment is directed towards patients with stones that cause pain, infection, or blockage of a kidney rather than helping patients to prevent kidney stones in the first place."