Extra Pounds Increase Chances of Kidney Stones
Weight linked to risk of painful condition, study finds

WEDNESDAY, March 31 (HealthDayNews) -- The more overweight a person is, the more likely he or she will have kidney stones, says a University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center study in the April issue of Kidney International.

This is the first study to identify a direct link between excess body weight and uric acid kidney stones, which occur in about 5 percent of kidney-stone patients and in about 30 percent of diabetics with kidney stones.

"This is yet another price to pay for being overweight or obese," Dr. Khashayar Sakhaee, a professor of internal medicine and program director of the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) at UT Southwestern, says in a prepared statement.



Kidney stones form when waste materials in urine do not dissolve completely. Starting as microscopic particles, they eventually grow into kidney stones, which remain in the kidney or break loose and travel down the urinary tract. Sakhaee and his colleagues tracked about 5,000 kidney-stone patients in Dallas and Chicago. They found that overweight and obese people were more likely to develop kidney stones, even if they restricted the types of food they ate. The results were the same for men and women.

"Larger people have very acidic urine even when they control their diets. Other studies we have done in the GCRC support this concept. For the first time, we are advising weight loss as part of our therapy. That connection had not been made in the past," Sakhaee says.

More information

The American Foundation for Urologic Disesase has more about kidney stones.

SOURCE: University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, news release, March 2004

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