Kidney stones: an inconvenient truth - July 15, 2008
A new woe that will result from climate change has surfaced: kidney stones.
According to Texas researchers a warmer US will mean around 2 million extra cases of kidney stones by 2050, if predictions using intermediate severity warming are correct. The logic is fairly simple: warmer climates increase the risk of kidney stones and global warming will expand America’s high-risk ‘kidney stone belt’ in the south east of the country.
“This study is one of the first examples of global warming causing a direct medical consequence for humans,” says study author Margaret Pearle, professor of urology at University of Texas Southwestern (press release).
Where risk of stones is over 20% higher than the northeast in 2000 (yellow), 2050 (orange) and 2095 (red) [Image: National Academy of Sciences, PNAS copyright 2008]
“There is a known geographic variation in stone disease that has been attributed to regional differences in temperature," adds Pearle. "When people relocate from areas of moderate temperature to areas with warmer climates, a rapid increase in stone risk has been observed.”
Writing in PNAS Pearle and colleagues warn that between 1.6 and 2.2 million extra cases are likely, at a cost of between $0.9–1.3 billion a year. Not to mention a lot of pain.
“Climate change’s impact on public health will be broad, severe and affect all sectors of the public health system,” says George Luber, associate director for climate change at the US Center for Disease Control’s national centre for environmental health (Chicago Tribune). The CDC also thinks climate change could bring more heat waves, toxic algal blooms, and spreading Lyme disease.
“People die in heat waves, but there are also increases in hospitalizations for other health outcomes, including kidney stones,” Jon Patz, who led a government assessment of the health impacts of climate change told Wired.
“Heart diseases and respiratory disease have been implicated, too. I wouldn’t want to say that our greatest fear is kidney stones. The real issue is that climate change cuts across so many different pathways, and this is one interesting example.”
Headline watch
Global warming to hit nether regions - Globe and Mail
