Modern methods of treatment of kidney stones is limited and sometimes painful. But recent studies are changing our predstavlennosti and behavior of rocks, suggesting that one day a doctor will be able to fully dissolve them directly in the kidney of the patient.
This problem is more likely to bother men than women.While kidney stones are harmless, they are associated with more serious health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Passing kidney stones can be extremely painful. Basically they consist of a substance called calcium oxalate, which was considered until now, can not dissolve in the kidneys. However, new research shows that this may not be so. After reviewing the information from the fields of Geology, microscopy and medicine, and using a host of advanced technologies, scientists found that kidney stones can actually dissolve. New data shows additional information about the nature and composition of the kidney stones, which is contrary to the opinion that had existed for centuries.
Mayandi Sivaguru, Deputy Director of the Institute for genomic biology the Carl R. Voie at the University of Illinois, is the main author of this article, published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Minute-by-minute report on the health status of the kidneys
Sivaguru and his colleagues used a combination of the latest optical methods for examining thin sections of kidney stones. They explain that many of the imaging techniques used in this study are common to Geology and geobiology, but has never been used to study mineralizatsii in vivo. One of the used methods (super-resolution nanometer-scale auto-fluorescence microscopy) has allowed researchers to see the pieces of kidney stones with a resolution of 140 nm. Nanometer billionth of a meter.
The analysis showed that the kidney stones consist of alternating organic and inorganic nanolayers of crystals. Moreover, these layers are strikingly similar to other ancient sediments, such as marine stromatolites, oroide, oyster shell and pearls.
The study co-author Bruce Fok, Professor of Geology and of Microbiology at the University of Illinois, explains what do these results mean
In Geology, when you see the layers, it means that something old is on something young. One layer can be deposited over very short or very long periods of time. We can say that kidney stones is not useless, crystalline stone, and minute-by-minute report about the health and functioning of human kidney. One stone represents a series of events over a certain period of time, which is crucial for deciphering the history of kidney disease.
Dissolution of stones in the right kidney of the patient
It is important to note that the study also showed that some of these layers is degraded, exposing the damaging crystals. The images showed that the new crystals, on the contrary, began to grow, and this means that kidney stones subject to multiple processes of dissolution, crystallizes and growing in the kidneys. In other words, kidney stones cyclically dissolved and appear again.
Before this study it was thought that a kidney stone is a simple crystal that eventually becomes more. But we were able to see that this is a dynamic process. The stone grows and disappears, grows and dissolves It consists of many components, and it is very lively.
This contradicts information that was considered true for centuries: kidney stones are homogeneous and practically insoluble in vivo.
Despite the fact that future doctors are taught in medical schools, we found that kidney stones are a dynamic process of growth and dissolution. This means that one day we will be able to intervene in order to fully dissolve the stones in the right kidney of the patient, which, according to most doctors, is impossible today. Our observations open up entirely new paradigm for clinical approaches, including dissolution of the stone in vivo.