Study reverses what we know about kidney stones |

In the United States, about 1 in 11 people suffer from kidney stones.

They affect more men than women; more than 10% of men develop them, compared to 7.1% of women.

Although generally safe, kidney stones have been associated with more serious conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.

Passing kidney stones can be extremely painful. The stones consist mainly of a substance called calcium oxalate, considered until now as insoluble in the kidneys.

However, new research suggests that this may not be the case. By learning from the fields of geology, microscopy and medicine and using many advanced technologies, a new study reveals that kidney stones can and can actually dissolve.

The new findings reveal additional information about the nature and composition of kidney stones, which goes against the understanding of kidney stones that have prevailed for centuries.

Mayandi Sivaguru, deputy director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the first author of this article, published in the journal. Scientific reports

"A thorough assessment of kidney health"

Sivaguru and his colleagues used a combination of the latest optical techniques to study thin sections of kidney stones.

They explain that many of the visualization techniques used in this study are common in geology and geobiology but have never been used to examine in vivo mineralization.

One technique used – nanoscale auto-fluorescence microscopy at super-resolution – allowed researchers to visualize slices of kidney stones at a resolution of 140 nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

The analysis revealed that kidney stones consist of "nanocoats of crystals rich in organic matter and minerals". In addition, these layers are "surprisingly similar" to other ancient sedimentary deposits, such as "marine stromatolites, ooids and oyster shells and pearls", among others.

Bruce Fouke, co-author of the study and professor of geology and microbiology at the University of Illinois, explains what the results mean: "In geology, when you see layers, this means that something younger is underlying. A layer, he says, can be filed on very short to very long periods.

Thus, "instead of being worthless crystalline masses, kidney stones are a minute record of the health and functioning of a person's kidney," adds Professor Fouke.

"[J]A single rock represents a series of events over time that are essential to deciphering the history of kidney disease. "

Dissolve stones "directly in a patient's kidney"

It is important to note that the study also revealed that some of these layers had degraded the crystals. The images showed that new crystals were beginning to develop, suggesting that kidney stones were undergoing multiple crystallization and growth events in the kidney. "

In other words, the kidney stones dissolve in a cyclical way and repel, says study co-author, Jessica Saw, a student at Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, and a doctor. in science. student at the University of Illinois.

"Before this study," she says, "it was thought that a kidney stone was just a crystal that grows with time. What we see here is that it's dynamic. The stone grows and dissolves, grows and dissolves. It is very rich in components. It is very alive.

This contradicts a belief that has lasted for centuries: kidney stones are homogeneous and essentially insoluble in vivo.

"Contrary to what doctors learn in their medical training, we found that kidney stones undergo a dynamic process of growth, dissolution, growth and dissolution," explains Professor Fouke.

"This means that one day we may be able to intervene to completely dissolve the stones directly into the patient's kidney, which most doctors would say is impossible to do.

Teacher. Bruce Fouke

"These observations," the researchers conclude, "open up a fundamentally new paradigm for clinical approaches that include stone dissolution in vivo."