Jul 14 2008
Wired Magazine is reporting that global warming will not only increase the chances of getting tropical diseases like malaria, dengue fever and hantavirus but it will also increase the likelihood of getting kidney stones.
The 'kidney belt' of expanding high-risk zones for kidney stones. Image courtesy of PNAS
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predict that rising temperatures will make kidney stones more common. By 2050, say University of Texas urologists Tom Brikowski and Margaret Pearle, most Americans will live in areas considered high-risk zones for the painful deposits, caused when minerals crystallize into chunks too large leave the bladder.
"We're always hearing about vector-borne diseases, about how climate change will influence the environment and indirectly us," said Pearle. "But this is a case of an environmentally sensitive disease process."
Currently the rates of kidney stones are highest in the Southern states, particularly the Southeast, where heat and humidity lead to dehydration that accelerates stone formation. Urologists refer to those states as the "kidney-stone belt," and some 40 percent of the U.S. population now resides within it. But under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's mid-range estimates, the belt will expand north and up the coasts, enveloping 56 percent of the population by 2050. By that point, calculate Perle and Brikowski, climate change will have produced around 2 million extra kidney stones, with an annual price tag of $1 billion.
Kidney stone formation can be arrested simply by drinking more water but existing research shows that people in hotter climates simply don't take this measure to protect their health. "You'd think that with fair warning and gradual change, people would adapt, but they don't," Pearl said. "It's the same reason people in the South now have higher rates than the North. They don't adapt."