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Kidney Stones Are Rising Among Children & Teens, Especially Girls
Research Shows Kidney Stones Are Rising Among Children & Teens, Especially Girls
Thirty years ago, kidney stones were considered a disease of the middle-aged white man. Now doctors are increasingly seeing a different kind of patient suffering from the extremely painful condition, especially during summer.
Kidney stones, hard deposits of minerals and salts that can get caught in the urinary tract, are now occurring in younger people, particularly among teenage girls, emerging data shows.
Experts aren’t sure why more children and teens are developing the condition, but they speculate that a combination of factors are to blame, including diets high in ultraprocessed foods, increased use of antibiotics early in life and climate change causing more cases of dehydration. Doctors who spoke to News said they see more kids with kidney stones in the summer than any other season.
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Kidney stones is a metabolic disorder, also known as nephrolithiasis, that occurs when minerals such as calcium, oxalate and phosphorus accumulate in urine and form hard yellowish crystals as small as a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball in severe cases. Some stones make their way out the urinary tract with no issue, but others can get stuck, blocking the flow of urine and causing severe pain and bleeding.
In recent years, hospitals across the country have opened pediatric “stone clinics” to keep up with demand, where children can meet with urologists, nephrologists and nutritionists to get the care they need to treat and prevent future kidney stones. Kidney stones in adults are linked to conditions such as metabolic syndrome, obesity, hypertension and diabetes.
“In children, we’re not seeing that,” said Dr. Gregory Tasian, a pediatric urologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “They’re otherwise healthy and simply come in with their first kidney stone for unclear reasons.”
Much of the nephrolithiasis research in children in the U.S. has been led by Tasian and his colleagues and is focused on finding the cause. “Clearly something has changed in our environment that is causing this rapid shift,” he said.
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