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WASHINGTON: More Americans are likely to suffer from
kidney stones in the coming years as a result of global warming,
researchers at the University of Texas said Monday.
Kidney stones, which are formed
from dissolved minerals in the urine and can be extremely painful,
are often caused by dehydration, either by not drinking enough
liquid or losing too much due to high heat conditions.
If global warming trends continue
as projected by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in
2007, the United States can expect as much as a 30-percent growth in
kidney stone disease in some of its driest areas, said the findings
published in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
The increased incidence of
disease would represent between 1.6 million and 2.2 million cases by
2050, costing the US economy as much as $1 billion in treatment
costs.
“This study is one of the first
examples of global warming causing a direct medical consequence for
humans,” said Margaret Pearle, professor of urology at University
of Texas Southwestern and senior author of the paper.
“When people relocate from
areas of moderate temperature to areas with warmer climates, a rapid
increase in stone risk has been observed. This has been shown in
military deployments to the Middle East for instance.”
The lead author of the research,
Tom Brikowski, compared kidney stone rates with UN forecasts of
temperature increases and created two mathematical models to predict
the impact on future populations.
One formula showed an increase in
the southern half of the country, including the already existing
“kidney stone belt” of the southeastern states of Alabama,
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina,
South Carolina and Tennessee.
The other showed that the
increase would be concentrated in the upper Midwest.
“Similar climate-related
changes in the prevalence of kidney stone disease can be expected in
other stone belts worldwide,” the study said.
--AFP
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