| The following article is part of conference coverage from the 2017 American Urological Association meeting in Boston. Renal and Urology News’ staff will be reporting live on medical studies conducted by urologists and other specialists who are tops in their field in kidney stones, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, enlarged prostate, and more. Check back for the latest news from AUA 2017. |
BOSTON — Men are more likely than women to present to an emergency department with kidney stones following high daily temperatures, investigators reported at the American Urological Association 2017 annual meeting.
A team led by Gregory E. Tasian MD, MSc, MSCE, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, analyzed data from 132,597 patients who presented with kidney stones to emergency departments in South Carolina from 1996 to 2015. They looked at the relative risk of stone presentation to an emergency department during the 10 days following temperature exposure. The reference temperature was 10° C (50° F).
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At a daily temperature at the 99th percentile, the relative risk of stone presentation was increased by 72% among men compared with 15% among women, the study showed.
The difference was greatest among patients aged 20 to 65 years, according to the investigators. The risk was similar between patients with public and private insurance.
Study findings suggest that sex differences in stone presentations are due to the sexually dimorphic effect of heat on evaporative water loss instead of greater exposure to ambient temperature, Dr Tasian and his colleagues concluded in a poster presentation.
Patients living in warmer climates had a lower risk of stone presentation following moderately high daily temperatures compared with those living in temperate or cold areas. This finding “suggests that prolonged heat exposure may lead to adaptive responses that mitigate the effect of high temperatures on kidney stone presentation,” the researchers stated.
“These results should be considered when developing secondary kidney stone prevention strategies to increase fluid intake,” Dr Tasian told Renal & Urology News. “These differences in the temperature dependence of kidney stone presentation may also improve the accuracy of projections of the effect of climate change on future nephrolithiasis prevalence.”
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Reference
Tasian GE, Vicedo-Cabrera AM, Kopp RE, et al. Age, sex, and climate differences in the temperature-dependence of kidney stone presentations. [abstract]. J Urol 2017;197:e7-e8. Poster presented at the American Urological Association 2017 annual meeting in Boston on May 12, 2017. Poster MP01-17.
