Are you a Health Professional? Jump over to the doctors only platform. Click Here

Climate change may increase kidney stones

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

We might soon be feeling the effects of climate change inside as well as all around us. Kidney stones are expected to strike around 2.25 million more Americans by 2050, as temperature rises cause more people to become dehydrated. These excruciatingly expelled calcium deposits are caused by low urine volume.

About 13 per cent of men and 7 per cent of women in the US develop kidney stones during their lives, but those rates are much higher in an area of the south with high temperatures, nicknamed the kidney-stone belt.

Tom Brikowski of the University of Texas, Dallas, and his colleagues used the most up-to-date model of climate change, and population trends to predict how the prevalence of kidney stones may change in the US. California, Texas, Florida and the north-east will see the most new cases, and while the team hasn’t yet modelled data for the rest of the world, people in Asia and Eastern Europe could also be in for a painful future, Brikowski says.

(Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: University of Texas: July 2008)


Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Dates

Posted On: 19 July, 2008
Modified On: 16 January, 2014

Tags



Created by: myVMC